Three brand new lessons for playing the Blues, tasteful slide guitar & getting the best tones from your cigar box guitars.

NEW TODAY:  Quick Blues Lick of the Week:  The T-Shape Riff   A seriously badass slide-blues riff that uses shapes to explain it...not chords or music theory!  Another great way to kickstart your collection of blues riffs.

Tasteful Hammer-On Techniques:  This is a simple playing style that will develop your rhythmic playing. I use this all the time in concert in various ways. Here's the foundations of the style, broken down in one easy video.

THE BEST ACOUSTIC PICKUP for cigar box guitar...and the simple method of installing it:    I've played every sort of piezo-equipped cigar box guitar over the last two decades and this setup beats them all.  It's what I use in my new line of guitars...and I'll never go back! 

A little hello from Switzerland,

Here is my first cigar-box guitar created entirely pieces by pieces for laser cutting. My PIRATE'S GUITAR is an electro acoustic mini guitar with a special short scale of 488mm and can be mounted with 3 strings like a CIGAR-BOX GUITAR (tuned GDg) or with 4 strings like a UKULELE (tuned GCEA Low-G). She is playable acoustically but also amplified through a passive piezo pickup include under the bridge. The body and the neck are made of 61 pieces cut with a laser cutter in 2 peaces of 3mm and 5mm plywood. It also requires 4 classical guitar tuning pegs, a piezo mic capsule (already wired with an output jack socket), some screws, a fast wood glue and some nylon classical guitar strings. The graphics are burned by the laser during the cutting. For the mounting, it's like "Lego", every pieces clips with the other with some wood-glue, nothing to measure. Just look at the video...

The files of the original design are downloadable under Creative Commons Licence BY-NC-SA on our website: www.notsonoisy.com/pirates-guitar
We have not yet drafted "Instructables", but it's coming. In the meantime we have already organized 3 workshops where 30 people had mounted their own Pirate's Guitar, at the FABLAB-FRIBOURG, here in Switzerland.

I hope that will inspire you. Best regards. NOTsoNOISY Guillaume Reymond.

One of our workshops. Just 1 afternoon to build their own instruments.

I am starting my own CBG company; Insolitus Guitars. I chose the name because cigar box guitars are unusual, uncommon and that is what I enjoy most. I love unusual things and music from these instruments is beautiful to me. Even on youtube from the least skilled player the music rings in my ears something sweet. I found out about cigar box guitars in college my sophomore year. I didn't have money for a guitar so I 'googled' DIY (Do It Yourself) guitars online and there they were. They were minimalist (which I love) and simple to make. The various tuning styles that people have developed for them allows them to be uniquely diverse and can play any style. They are socially and economically relevant today as they were back in their humble begining.

Today's recession has called upon inovative and resourceful thinking. Recycling cigar boxes to create musical instruments and amplifiers is one great way. Using discarded or simple sustainable wood for the necks and other parts is great as well. They cost a fraction of the cost of a normal guitar to make but can produce sounds that are just as good; if not better. So for me to not look into making my own to sell and play then i would be making a mistake.

I am still a beginner in playing guitar, I have been tinkering and playing around with guitars and basses since I was fifteen years old. I never really had the time nor the patience to sit down and learn how to play them. Until i found out about cigar box guitars. These wonderful instruments inspire me. So my blog at wordpress is called: http://insolitusguitars.wordpress.com/ and here at Cigar Box Nation. You can follow my adventure in learning how to play and build these soulful and simple instruments.