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bow (5)
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.
I had forty years and two hundred thousand dollars invested in that building and contents. I had spent a huge amount of time in it building and designing stuff, including half a dozen harps and all my patterns and jigs for building my harp designs. I am used to puttering around constantly and I'm always doing something. I had an old cheap cast table saw in storage and an old three wheel sears bandsaw, plus a chinese 8 inch drill press. I dug them out and sniveled a bit. I was spoiled by my investment in high quality stuff. My Grizzly table saw weighed more than four hundred pounds and could split a whisker. My Rikon bandsaw was simply superb and I loved it. Its neck after the fire looked like a flamingo's, all warped. I had little routers and a router table and more, all told ten routers were melted down.
Enough of that story. I raided pawn shops in Jacksonville and came up with a 3/8 inch hand drill, a cheapo router and a Ryobi router table with a router attached. Dusted off the band saw and checked the setup. Nice but no power. Checked out the table saw. Tried to skin a rough board like a poormans jointer - wobble marks - I bought a forty dollar blade and it helped but it still left a wobble cut on everything.- still it cut. Set up my storage shed as a sort of shop.
Now I had been considering buying a Mcnally strumstick or building a Musicmaker Strumbly for several years and I thought what the h_ll I can build something like that without much of a shop. So I set out to figure out what kind of project this would be. While running endless internet searches for free music and info on tuning etc. I ran across CigarBoxNation.com At that point it "only" had seven thousand pictures posted and it was about six months old. I was completely blown away Hooked is probably the word..... That was in late July of 2009 ..............
I set out to find a cigar box. None to be found in my little town so off to the flea market. None there either so ten more miles and I am in downtown St Augustine Fl which has a few cigar shops. Cost me four dollars to park and two hours of walking and I had four cigar boxes that I had to pay five bucks a piece for. Way too much, but I was happy. I did some lay out work and decided I had to have frets since I was still trying for a strumstick type instrument. Also decided that since I had learned of piezo pickups on Cigarboxnation that I had to have one of those too. So I put one together. I got the tuners on upside down and backwards. (really) I got the toothpick frets glued on slightly crooked and slightly off intonation wise. Still it sounded good (still does) I had so much fun with it that I just took off like a maniac and built a half dozen more. Finally I decided to try a slide and that was a major turning point for me. I have had HUGE fun with the slides and dearly love the old delta blues sound. I have built up a repertoire of noise that nobody complains about so maybe its music. My daughter said she thought I was playing a CD and it was me so I must be getting better.
These things breed at night I swear they do. I know have four two string didly bows - three two string didly bows seven slide blues guitars and four strumstick style fretted - plus a my old canjo and four or five of my original builds that I don't even count anymore.
So I set out right around Christmas to sell some - I figured as much fun as I was having somebody else would want on this bandwagon. I have spent a huge amount of time fooling with Ebay and generally don't like it. It might work out but I am taking a break from it for a while.
I started going to a music swap meet down by Orlando at the Mount Dora flea market last month and again this month. No sales and quite a bit of money spent. However I have learned a great deal about my current taste in music and about the average guitarists perception of cigar box guitars. More importantly I discovered that in order to sell these things I HAVE TO master the music and I had to get some power. The March swap meet was expensive for me but I got two amps one that has fifteen watts of power and it makes my cigarbox guitars sound great.
The really good news is that I scored a Roland Micro amp. Nearly as much useful power as the `15watt and it has 22 effects built in !!!!!!!! I have had an absolute blast playing with this thing and I swear it makes me sound like I know what I am doing.
I have sold three of my builds and made decent money on two of those sales. I have had a great deal of interest in all of them. Guitarists seem to have a snooty ego about them and generally don't like them. The general non musician public seems to love them and the music. I have become pretty dedicated to finding the key to what will sell. Partly the Johnny Appleseed effect - Its just too much fun not to share. I have a plan and will share how it works out right here.
I am going to post some more blog notes on building tips here as I get time to do so - but thats it for now.
