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After designing a few CBGs and lap diddley bows that my husband brought to life with power tools, I made my first solo creation this week, and I'm smitten with my guitar style diddley bow. 

While I've made 2 lap diddley bows and 4 CBGs with 3 strings with my husband on the power tools and me on design, this is the first one I've made on my own and first one with a round neck. The pickup is a piezo disc pickup pre-wired to a jack from cbgitty.com. I used 1/8" pop rivets for string ferrules, a Ping tuner, 1" pine dowel, a craft box (I know some purists may be annoyed by that), a slotted screw for the nut, a lamp nipple for the bridge, and tarp grommets for the sound hole covers. I sawed the dowel with a hand saw for creating flats for the tuner, then I used a drill with regular bits and Forstner bits for all the rest. 

I've been a hobby guitarist for 16 years, but I'm totally new to slide guitar. This is so fun! I love the simplicity, and there is something amazing about playing music on an instrument you made yourself.

This video is a demo of a diddley bow (1 string cigar box guitar or CBG) I made on 12/30/15. https://youtu.be/vNHkUX8UAJI ;

I had to turn off the Christmas tree lights while using the Mustang amp because they were causing some electromagnetic interference and creating an annoying hum on the amp. Most of the music I played I learned from Juston Johnson tutorials. The long song I played was based on a tune by Elmore James.