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Nashville CBG builders and players ATTENTION

Posted by frank tennyson on October 5, 2012 at 10:56am

NASHVILLE builders and players ATTENTION!

We can all get together and join in as an association of Nashville area CBG. Artist to do charity work including building CBGs for worthy causes. We could put on concerts, donate time to teach the art to children and each other, do all kind of neat things. Heck we could even have regular meetings with tea and crumpets.

I have tried to look all of you up and send all of you a friend request. My motive was mainly selfish. I am a total novice and I do need a mentor and guide to just be able to learn what a chord is. However, I made a discovery. Do you know how many CBG entheusaist are in Nashville, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Brentwood, Fairvirew, or Dickson? Did you know we have professional players, builders, songwriters, and shop owners, as well as novices like me? We have guys however there were a surprising number of gals also. We make up a very large group!

Go to community AND DO AND ADVANCED SEARCH USING TN IN THE STATE SEARCH AREA. Since I live in Fairview I did not look at Madison, Gallitin, or points east but there were many out there. There are many in Morrison - yeah - as small as it is they could have their own club!

MY rallying cry is CBGers UNITE! Form clubs, associations, local groups!

 

Nashville "Are you ready to r-u-m-b-l-e?

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Update on Brad's first CBG

Posted by Brad Graham on January 26, 2012 at 1:49pm

After getting some nice maple from my buddy Rob the week before Christmas, visions of cigar boxes began to dance in my head. Reality intruded, however, when I realized that I had no place to actually build my CBG. All of the surface space in the Wig Shop (my basement lair) was cluttered with the typical rockstar detrius: guitars, pedals, recording gear, and cocaine. After hastily cobbling together a workbench out of an old palette, wine crates, and a few cinder blocks, I commenced to sawin' and sandin'.

When I regained consciousness, I was coated in sawdust. I discovered that I needed a shave, and that my family had started calling local hospitals and taverns, attempting to locate my body. But upon looking down at my sad little workbench, I saw that a CBG-shaped mass was beginning to take shape among the wood shavings and empty PBR silos. Joy.

After taking sustenance and reuniting with my wife and children, I began to ponder the next steps. I would soon have to drill my pristine headstock, and figure out what type of bridge to use. What pickup should I deploy? And will I really have the nerve to fret this musical stogie?

Stay tuned, my friends.

 9353756063?profile=original

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About Cuban Cigars

Posted by Sam Alien on January 24, 2010 at 6:11pm
Cuban Cigars originate from Cuba. There are lots of things you'll find fascinating Cuba and what it is famous for. It is a small island that is located just few hundred miles away from the Florida coast. It is mostly famous for its rum, dancing and women.Cuba is very famous for its world-wide famous cigars. They are considered to be the best as well as expensive ones. They have become a style icon as well and these have also been labelled as the forbidden fruit; it is because of their unique flavor which you won't get anywhere else. All the production is carefully controlled by the government. These are made up from tobacco, wrappers grown and fillers; being manufactured in Cuba only. One unique fact about is that they are hand-rolled. These hand-rolling is done by the masters in this field; also known as the torcedores and they are highly respected. It is, to an extent, illegal to use in the United States of America.CUBAN CIGARS are so famous that even many non-cigar smokers know it or at least have heard of it. It is always been regarded as the finest and the most tasting brands available world wide. Another reason why they are so famous is that it is really hard to get them. Solo offer an extremely good market for the purpose of importing and exporting it to hardcore cigar lovers worldwide. Today, there are various brands of available like Montecristos and Coronas Especiales. As mentioned earlier, its distribution in the US is illegal to some extent; however, there is currently no outright law that forbids their presence in the United States. Recently, the embargo on the Cuban products were altered by the Department of Justice; making it allowable to bring some amount of it from Cuba visit; which is approximately two boxes and that's for personal use only. There are various private hotels and casinos or bars where they are sold and they have been working in this way with almost no or very little problems over the recent years.If you are a Cigar lover then be aware that in the recent few years, there have been many growing cases of the black marketing of bogus or fake materials. If you know much about cigars, you'll be able to identify those fake Cuban cigars because of their poor quality and above all their poor appearance. However, black marketers are trying to make fake quality that may be cause difficulties in being recognized as fake. If you don't want to be tricked by these then make sure that you buy these Cuban cigars from reliable and authorized dealers only.If you are a real lover and really interested in trying, regarded as the finest cigars available in the market but if you more concerned about its legal consequences then don't worry; it is not a matter of too much concern. It is allowed to have non-commercial and private use of it and it's been going on for years; moreover, it has also been used by various politicians and showbiz stars as a style statement.Summary :-Sami Alien has done years of research about CUBAN CIGARS. He has great knowledge and tries to help lovers to keep safe from fraud peoples who trying to sell fake cigars. He studied in detail all about CUBAN CIGARS from different resources so that the stuff he write is useful for those who read.
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memory jogging notes on building and playing cbg's

Posted by Bill Ludeman on March 19, 2010 at 2:18am
My shop burned to the ground in June of 2009. Nobody knows for sure what caused it - the fire dept asked me if it was electrical and I said I don't see how, since everything was turned off - so they put it down to electrical..... No insurance.
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.
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