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I've looked at all the wiring diagrams I have and the one that I don not see is:

wiring two piezos to a jack and volume without a  3 way switch.. could anybody point me in the right direction ?

sincerely,  

Kirby

The Cigar Box Nation Newsletter - All the cool instruments, plans and music you've come to expect.  Join the revolution.

Want more music cool instrument news?  Check out this week's C. B. Gitty newsletter. Featuring two free instrument plans:  Build your own Travel Uke + Build your own Gourd Banjo!  LINK

The Pallet Reso by Cigar Box Nation member, Sanddraggin. 

"Here's a shot of me playing my latest Reso. The neck is an old Kay v-neck I refretted. The box is made from a pallet with some paduak trim for flavor. The cover is a copper sheet I banged out"

Handmade Copper Pipe and Scrap Iron Guitars

"Two of the most freakish guitars in my extremely weird guitar collection are by Tone-A-Cane Copper Pipe Guitars and Pete Regan’s Metal Guitars. Both are crafted using metal for body and necks…and both are so heavy, you could win bar fights with them."

VIDEO DEMO:  The only thing that sounds better than a P-90 'Soapbar" pickup is when a P90 is shoved into a cigar box guitar.

Click and scroll down to see the vid demo of the Foundry-Tone Soapbar Pickup at C. B. Gitty.

New contest:   Send us your favorite Piezo Pickup Tips & Tricks!   

 

What things make your pickups sound great?  Got a favorite setup?  Special methods that nobody has considered?  Send them to us! Two random entries will win $50 Gitty gift certificates. 

Email your entry to GittyFans@cbgitty.com

 

Contest runs now through Midnight, September 30, 2015.  All submissions will be published as part of our ongoing free building tips series.

We take all your contest submissions and create free how-to's for everyone.  Have you seen all the submissions from our Fretting Tips contest?  We've posted all of 'em on Cigar Box Nation.

The Instruments of Robbie Schoen - a Cigar Box Nation Facebook feature

The Mop-o-phone: Read the historic newspaper article

Cigar Box Nation is sponsored by C. B. Gitty, fine purveyors of cigar box guitar parts and tools. 

C. B. Gitty: The Source of Endless Instrument Inspiration.

Double Neck Cigar Box Guitar by Cigar Box Nation member, Mark Matyjakowski

Well this is my first build, it is a 4 string dandy. I hope by the weekend I can post the picture of the completed project.

I cant wait to play it. I'm already looking forward to my next build, man I am hooked. I thing the next one will be a 3 string.....

Our book about Ed Stilley is coming out this November.  We are a folk duo called Still on the Hill who have been collecting his instruments and stories and singing his praises for 18 years or more.  check out a 5 min video about him and his work and our new book/project  on our website

www.stillonthehill.com/edstilley    ; CLICK on PRESENTATION

Looking forward to hearing from folks. LOVE Cigar Box Nation.

Donna and Kelly Mulhollan

Earlier this year I was given a pile of unknown scrap wood from a friend doing some renos. He knew about my cbg hobby and that I liked to use reclaimed materials is possible. I was a little unsure of agreeing to take half a truck load of scrap lumber without knowing what it really was. I don't have much space for storage. But when he dropped it off, one sniff of that unmistakable sauna smell told me I was getting a bundle of cedar baseboards. I was a little disappointed hoping it would be maple or oak that I could use for necks, but I piled it up and figured if all else fails I can have a nice campfire.

A couple weeks later I was playing my steel string acoustic and my wife asked me if I was going to do anything with those boards. I wasn't really sure what to tell her. My wife has helped me curtail my hoarding tendencies by making me dispose of things I really don't have any use for. Realizing where this conversation was headed, I had to think fast. I knew some boxes were made of cedar, but then it hit me. My acoustic had the answer: it was a cedar top guitar. I quickly told her that I could make guitar tops and build my own boxes. This got the usual response of, "Uh huh...If you say so...".

I started doing my homework and looking at my own guitar to find out what makes an appropriate piece of wood for a soundboard. One thing kept coming up (as well as studying my own instrument) that quarter sawn wood with a tight grain will give the best tone and have the most strength. After sorting through my boards, I found that about 1/3 of the pieces met this criteria. And once I took into account cracks, knots, nail holes and other defects, I could possibly use about half of that.

What follows is a description of how I created a handful of soundboards. The first, which I made a ukulele from was done with a scarf joint in the Centre seam, but that was the hard way to do it. These instructions are mostly done from the advice of a local luthier Peter Sawchyn (his guitars are amazing, check them out: www.sawchyn.com).

Resaw the Wood

For this job you'll need a bandsaw and a fence.

The first piece I cut I used a 3/8" blade with 16tpi. It worked but it was slow, smoky and eventually wonked out at the end of the cut. I picked up a 3/4" 3tpi blade and that's all I'll use in the future. Make sure the blade is tensioned properly and running straight. If things are a little out the blade can pull at an angle or wobble. All of which can be cleaned up later but makes the job waaaay harder.

I made my fence out of some scrap plywood. It's nothing fancy. Just made sure it 90° and had spaces to put my clamps.

If using raw or reclaimed material, cut the edge of one side of the board to square it up.

Measure the midpoint of the wood and clamp down the fence to that distance from the blade.

Slowly feed the board through the saw. As you approach the end of the cut, you can grab the piece from the other side and pull it through. Please don't resaw your thumbs.

Planing the Wood

According to my planer's instructions I'm not supposed to plane to a thickness under 1/2". There could be damage caused to the bed of the machine. Ok. I'll take your word manual. But, it doesn't say anything about using a very straight piece of 3/4" plywood as a base. Actually, someone on the Internet said to do this. I'll recommend this practice as well.

Adjust planet so it just starts taking off material. Feed each half through consecutively. This ensures they will end up at the same thickness.  I've gotten the best success by taking very light passes. I turn my crank a 1/4 turn each pass. Continue until board is 3mm thick.

Look at all those shavings. Delightful.

Bookmatching the Soundboard

Here's the fun part. Flip the boards so the grain is running opposite, or mirrored, to itself. I flip my boards around to see which side will look the nicest. Mark an X so you know which edges you need to work on.

Sand the edges flush. The luthier suggested clamping the boards together and using a long level with sandpaper taped to it to clean up the edge. My levels are all grooved on the top so I clamped sandpaper to my table saw bed. Hold the boards tightly together and run them back and forth on the sand paper. Take care to hold it as close to 90 to the table as you can.

Brush away the dust and test the edges by dry fitting them. If you can still see a line sand a bit more until the line all but disappears when pushed together.

The rest of this process will require a surface you can pound nails into. I use my workbench. It's designed to have the plywood come off and replaced if it gets too ugly. If you have a nice bench, grab a scrap of plywood or something. You build cbgs, so chances are you're resourceful.

Mark in 4 spots along the edge of one board.

Lightly drive 4 nails along this line. Set board back against the nails. Place a 1/4" thick scrap under the edge of the board. Place second board tightly against first piece keeping the scrap running down the center. Mark 4 spots along edge of second board. Lightly drive 4 nails along this line.

Run a bead of glue along edge of first board. Set against edge of second board. Slide scrap piece out of the way. Push both pieces down. The force of the nails will push the boards together. This is all the pressure required to set this joint.

Clean excess glue away.

Set an object on top of joint. I use a couple hammers. This prevents the board from lifting up while the glue sets up. I also like to use a strip of wax or parchment paper so I don't glue my soundboard to the table.

That's it. I wait overnight and then lift the board out. I then tap the board, hold it to my ear and giggle as hear the knock ring out for a couple seconds. Here are a couple pics of the bracing (made from the second grade cedar boards) and the completed guitars. I don't mean to brag, but these guitars sound nice. Great tone, volume and sustain. I still have a lot to sort out with box construction, but as for tops, I don't think I'll be changing this process. Simple and effective.

Happy building and thanks for reading.  Didn't really mean to type this much.

My first cbg was a three string made from a really cool Niles and Moser Chancellor box. I think I built it in an afternoon.   Against the odds it worked, stayed in tune and was fairly playable - if you ignored the biting fret ends.  Since then I’ve built about 20 or so and like the first, each has presented me with questions or problems that prompted construction of the next. 

Once my awe with the original cbg waned and I started to see it with a critical eye I was bothered by the lack of acoustic output.  I built 3 or 4 the same way and all of them were pretty much useless without an amp.  That (and the historical work by Speal and McNair) got me thinking about the sound of cbgs 150 years ago.  Clearly they were doing something quite different from what I was doing, since they seemed to have produced a useful instrument that didn't rely on electrical amplification.  I wanted to know how you could get enough volume and a pleasing tonal quality out of a cigar box without the pickup. 

At the outset I was convinced that at least part of the answer lay in the difference between the cigar box as it is now and as it was in the past.  Somewhere I had heard that cedar’s natural pest deterrence and delightful smell made it the wood of choice for cigar boxes.  Well, that certainly wasn’t the case with the cigar boxes I had found.  They seemed to be paper and very little wood that I could identify other than plywood.  I surmised that older boxes were likely made of solid wood and more often than not that wood was cedar.   I had installed enough cedar shingles and had seen some pretty sweet sounding classical guitars with cedar tops to realize that red cedar is very lively: roof shingles dropped onto a hard surface are almost musical. Okay so that was my “cave man” moment and I started to build my own boxes and tops in an effort to recreate what I thought was the character of an old time cigar box. 

The first of these non-cigar box, cigar box guitars (?) was built on a cigar box with the original lid removed and replaced with cedar from my most likely source – left over cedar roof shingles.  Planing a roof shingle to consistent thickness and still getting enough useable length meant the top roughed out pretty thin.  I surmised that it was too thin to take the downward force of the strings and should therefore be braced in some way (later experiments have proven this).  I adapted a ladder shaped brace from a mandolin kit I had built using ½ inch by ¼ inch cedar stock.  Once I got it all together and set it up I found I had built a reasonably worthy acoustic instrument and ultimately had the answer to my question – the soundboard wood really matters, thickness matters, ie it must be thin enough to resonate and produce volume and tone and finally you've got to brace the thin soundboard from underneath as luthiers have been doing forever.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the answer to my question was available via a non-experimental route (the collective expertise of luthiers)– but what fun is that.

The real test of usefulness of the aforementioned principles came when I found the ultimate cigar box.  The box is a made entirely from cedar and originally contained Pandora cigars (circa 1940?).  I planed the top thin and braced it.  It is a small 5 by 9 by 2 ½ inch box.  I didn’t expect much volume but I was hoping for some sweet tone.  I wasn’t disappointed – the tone was very nice and the volume quite a bit greater than expected.  It is a fine (to my ear at least) acoustic instrument that I could play around a campfire without an amp. Of course I put piezos in it and I can run it through an amp and rock out too...
The top..thinned and braced - further experiments with braces seem to suggest very little change in the tone if these braces are refined and shaped. I know that luthiers discuss the role of brace pattern and profile at length and they can probably hear the nuances.  However,  the big gains seem to come from "thin and braced"no matter how clumsily.  As an added note I think gluing the braces to the sides of the box can result in acoustic dampening.  In one case where I extended braces to glue into slots on the box sides, the result was a dead sounding instrument.  I may be mistaken, but I think its important to be sure that the soundboard is allowed to vibrate as freely as possible.Finished Pandora's Box

And, by the way neck wood takes a close second for imparting tone - there is a real distinction between a red oak neck (very bright sounding) and the more mellow hemlock necks I prefer to use.

Check out the audio file - ..Pandora.mp3

My summer is officially over, despite what the calendar says.  I start teaching high school Chemistry next week and I have a lot of desk time to put to prepare for my new career - one I've always wanted but have been too distracted to do for 20 years.  My other jobs I've taken for the money, the challenge of more responsibility that leads to promotion and more money, and a great opportunity to start up and run a company for eight years trying always to be the best employer possible and the monetary reward that comes from that.  But as I carried on with that pathway, despite the rewards for all my hard work, life was becoming an empty existence.  When things became too frustrating, I had to make a change in my life.  The end of my summer is sort of an official stepping-off point to what I see as getting back to a more meaningful existence.

Last week's events started off on Wednesday night Open Mic at Caffe Lena put on by the Saratoga Acoustic Blues Society.  I've been there every month since February or March when I started.  Horse racing is at it's peak in Saratoga Springs with the Travers Stakes drawing over 50,000 spectators coming to see the Triple Crown winner American Pharoah run and hopefully win. The favorite ended up losing to Keen Ice a 12:1 odds horse who came from the back to third late in the race and pulled out the decisive win.  I hear the crowd was pretty quiet at the finish.

But I digress.  Because of all the extra people in town, I left home early to be sure I could find parking within walking distance of Caffe Lena.  I didn't have any problem finding a good spot so I sat on Broadway for about 45 minutes just playing a little.  I didn't feel like putting out my hat to collect tips, but I got my picture taken about a dozen times and a few questions about the guitar.  During the course of that, I finally decided on my three songs for the open mic and came up with a new way to play one.  Living dangerously.

I tuned down to G minor and started my set with "You Are My Sunshine", a song I've played a lot and done once before at the open mic.  This time I finger picked my way through and put in a solo verse of the melody picked on the bass string.  That was a little bit rough, but I like the version and it went well.

My second and third song I played without a break.  First I picked out "Amazing Grace" as an instrumental that led into "John the Revelator".  I got a great round of applause, several quick compliments from the crowd as I returned to my seat and one person approached me to say how much they enjoyed the set and seeing how much my performances have improved over the last several months.

On Thursday, we started a long turn-and-burn trip to Chicago.  We dropped our kids off with the in-laws in Rochester, spent night and left early the next morning.  My wife had never been to downtown Chicago and while I've been there about a dozen times, it has usually been February or early March for a tradeshow.

The reason for the trip was to see Frank Bang, a former guitarist for Buddy Guy's band, return to play at Buddy Guy's Legends.  In his collection is one of my Sawzall box guitars and I have been wanting to hear it live for the longest time.  We set up camp at the Hilton Chicago courtesy of reward points gained with my former corporate travels and enjoyed a few nice walks around the city, lake shore and riverfront.  

Frank met us for dinner at Buddy's before the show and Linsey Alexander was playing a set to start the evening.  He's a terrific performer and he works the crowd well.  I picked up his latest CD and I can see myself doing one of his songs at September's open mic.

We were early enough to get a table right at the stage and we staked out our territory to ensure we'd have the prime seat for Frank's performance.

Frank Bang and the Secret Stash put on a spectacular one hour show for the full house.  Frank refers to the Sawzall box guitar as "the most popular member of the band."  The reaction from people sitting near me proves that to be at least somewhat true.  Frank introduced me to the crowd and they gave a warm welcome.

Then the fun started...

Amped up and with effects, I can still hear the box. The humbuckers scream and there is a delicious amount of feedback that allows unending sustain.  I was so happy to hear the guitar played as it should be without getting yelled at to "TURN IT DOWN!"  :)

Frank is preparing to release a new CD "Back To The City" and he was recording for a DVD that night.  It was an incredible show.

So that was the official end to my summer.  On Sunday we left Chicago just after 5AM, picked up our girls and got home around 9PM.  Over 24 hours of drive time to see a one hour show and worth every minute and mile.

School starts next week. . .

I've kind of been away from these pages and from making instruments for the last month or so. Lots of other demands on my time from other folks and other responsibilities. I've missed it! Now that summer's winding down and the firewood pile is building up I plan to get back to doing what I love - making and playing these things. I went to the PA CBG Fest this weekend and feel rejuvenated. Got to play on the open mic stage and meet a bunch of talented people. It was great to talk to J.Rob with whom I've had many conversations on CBN. I picked up a pickup from Dan Sleep, talked with CB Gitty Ben, Glenn Watt, Shane Speal, Stombox Johnny and listened to a wide range of music played on homemade instruments. Kim particularly enjoyed April May and the June Bugs! Picked up the book "One Man's Trash" by Bill Jehle and Jim from the Emporium told me that Bill was sitting right over there so I got him to sign it. Many thanks to all who put the festival together. It was great! 

Can anyone help please?
bought a speaker cab for £2 at the bootfair thinking it would just have a naff speaker in there. In fact, It has a 12" Celestion in it... Woohoo !!

However, it has a speaker transformer in there too and I have no knowledge of how to wire it up. Can I just connect a jack socket to the 2 pin lead and plug the speaker out connector from my amp to it or do I need to do something else?
Attached are some pics.. can someone advise me please?
Thanks
Gary

Hello from Madison, Wisco. I'm a newbee, and love this site. I've got my first three string (24 3/4 scale) to a point where I'm beyond my depth. I wonder if a diatonic fretless fingerboard would be good for using a slide to attempt blues but also to possibly play old gospel and REGGAE without the slide. I plan on indicating fret positions so as to be helpful when not using a slide. I have never played a musical instrument before, and know I need to start as simple as possible. May be I'll be needing more than one guitar.  Are the blues fretting and diatonic fretting not the same? Also would I use the dots at all or would they be in a located in different places. Sorry if these are old questions. Thanks for any direction anyone would like to give. 

I play in a weird tuning which I think may be open A flat to suit my voice.

My A harp works when I play blues starting at the third fret.

But I cant find a harp to work when I play starting from open position (open A flat I'm guessing?)

(basically it's open type D configuration of notes,  but up a few semi tones etc)

So logically if an A harp works when I start playing blues on the third fret, you would think an G harp may work on the open position, but it doesn't.

I think if I may be possibly playing in A flat hence would I hence need a F sharp harp, which I don't have.

Does this make sense to anyone and can they advise, bearing in mind I don't know the actual tuning?

It's a head twisting riddle I know, can anyone help?

(other than get a tuner out an figure out what open tuning it is)

Thanks for any help I can get

pic below has nothing to do with this blog..lol

After a week of playing several gigs on the "Coevorden Special" it turns out to be a reliable little box guitar with a great sound, especially during the jazzy solo's.

(balcony concert at the town square, Tomar) 

It's new owner, Canadian singer/songwriter Robert Burton Hubele, seems to be very happy with it. Even though we had some other guitars available for his "highway of dreams" tour, (a "real" telecaster and such) he travels around with only the box guitar and our studio resonator (Jay Turser).

(Playing at the Nautico Bar in Sines, way south of Lisbon, Portugal)

Playing at the Bluesbarn Garden Party (Home of Triple Chaos)

A great night at the "Happy People Only Bar" in Pelinos

Another great week ahead of us, with a few nice venues to go to, a video to record, and well... enjoy the summer! 

Yes, after the long agonizing wait, the second to Kevin M. Kraft action novel, DOBORO THE BOTTLENECKER will finally be revealed via the second official trailer for the book!

The author who brought you the "contemporary religious fantasy" and the "inspirational thriller" now brings you the "heartwarming action drama." Kraft's long-time love for action tales, inspirational stories, cigar box guitars, fedoras and trench coats--so many of his passions converge with DOBORO.

Here's the logline:

After an assassination attempt nearly kills him, a man returns seven years later as a blind blues street performer to protect the daughter he had presumed dead from the man who had nearly killed him.

Lovers of good, moving novels will want to get a copy of DOBORO. Slated for an end-of-September (subject to change) release, DOBORO has already received exciting reviews from Kraft's beta readers with descriptions like:

“What I appreciate most in a good book is its ability to continually draw me back, and Kevin Kraft does just that with DOBORO! I couldn't stay away while at the same time hesitated to read more because I didn't want it to end, the perfect problem to have while reading a truly good book! "

and

"DOBORO THE BOTTLENECKER, is action packed from start to finish. You won't want to put it down. The characters are real and engaging, the details well researched, and his writing is simply a pleasure to read."

and

"Excellent! Original! I've never read anything like this before!"

Saturday August 11th is the day. Check Kevin M. Kraft's Facebook page on that day for a link to this...and perhaps much more, including THE OFFICIAL BOOK COVER, another sample chapter for your reading pleasure and perhaps a SAMPLE from Doboro from his forthcoming EP (title still pending)!

https://www.facebook.com/events/881325535279099/

Just finished a couple of fretted builds my first and second actually, made a 23 1/2" scale for my grand-daughter, and made a 25 1/2" scale for a mate at work, the small one has a NZ Rimu neck with Puriri fret board, English Oak extensions to head stock, bone nut and Puriri bridge, with a  piezzo pick up through a 500k volume pot, tuned to GBG sounds pretty good too.

The bigger one has a mahogany neck with maple fret board English oak extensions on head stock with a Rimu veneer, Lipstick tube pick up and cover (cb gitty), the sound holes are drawer pulls with the backs knocked off them, spent a lot of time on the neck and it come out pretty damned good, I have now created a logo too "Geordies Guitars" and am currently working on the decals, next build will be with some rail bridge hardwood, called "Ironbark", its bloody nice timber and its from an old bridge built around 1902, looking forward to working on this timber....but first some home jobs to catch up on.....bugger!!

Hello! My name is Bill, and I'm the founder and president of a 501(c)(3) here in Northern Idaho. For the past three years we've put on an event called "Buffalo, Blues & Brews." It's been entirely standard three/four piece blues bands like Billy D & The Hoodoos, Cary Fly, and other bands. I'm a hobby guitarist myself and have recently discovered CBG's and Diddley Bows and have built a couple of each. In fact, I gave a Diddley Bow and a CBG that I built away as door prizes at our last BBB and the crowd loved it! I would like to see the event move toward these types of DYI instruments and musicians. In my view, they kick ass just as much as regular bands, even more so because they're homemade! There really isn't a festival of this type that I've seen here in the interior Pacific Northwest. Anybody have any ideas or input about how we would go about getting musicians and their craft/instruments to attend would be greatly appreciated! Even having workshops would be awesome too! We have our BBB event in mid July...so I want to startle process now for next year. Thanks for any insight you folks might have! 

 I've been hovering about the cigar box thing for quite a while now. Recently my step daughter came home for holidays with a new boyfriend in tow who like myself plays guitar, very well as it turned out, unlike myself. Anyhow we got to talking about guitars etc. and I told him I was thinking about building a cigar box guitar,he got very enthuiastic about and here we are with my first build, just needed that little nudge, gotta build him one now as a thank you.

 It is made from the lid off an Anzac biscuit tin. Anzac stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps which was formed to fight in the 1st world war every year commemorative items are brought out tins of Anzac biscuits being one. The rest of the sound box is made of red gum which I scavenged off the firewood heap and milled up on the band saw. The neck is made of Jarrah, both these woods are Australian natives. The bridge, nut, volume and tone nobs are made from old 308 bullet shells, that was the calibre the Anzacs used in the first world war. The pick ups are a mystery as they were given to me by a mate who had no idea what they were off, they look very sixties.

 So that's it folks my first build. Got orders for 2 more now, a mechanic mate want's a hub cap gitty and the bass player in my blues band want's a bass.

Any CBG nuts out there in the West Bend WI area or am I the only one.

Having completed several cigar box amp projects and seeing all of the many designs that ranged from minimalist to outrageous and not having cause to visit the "Store" for some time, I was delighted to see the addition of an amp with what I consider a more 'retro" feel, the construction of which made it clear to me that as a builder, perhaps I was on the right track with my design ideas!...

Although my Photoshop skills leave much to be desired, I think I'm progressing nicely in the building department.... 

Where are all the cigar box banjos?

As I was compiling the Cigar Box Nation newsletter this week, I noticed that the gas can banjo above by OneSixTwoCBGs was the top photo of the week.  It's a beauty and sports the traditional 5 string banjo neck.

Then I discovered Marvin Walker's cigar box banjo video (another top pick of the week)...and I asked myself, Where are all the cigar box banjos in this movement?

Some history:  The earliest set of cigar box instrument plans were by Daniel Carter Beard, the founder of The Boy Scouts.  These plans were part of a magazine article, "Christmas with Uncle Enos" and were first published in the 1880's. 

These plans were for a traditional fretless 5-string banjo based on an instrument built by Beard's family slave, Uncle Enos. 

Download the original Uncle Enos Cigar Box Banjo plans here.

There are many examples of turn-of-the-Century cigar box banjos collected in the book, Musical Instruments of the Southern Appalachian Mountains as well. History is spotted with these instruments.  So why aren't they more prominant?

Today's Cigar Box Guitar Movement and beyond:  The modern cigar box guitar movement started with predominantly blues-oriented performers and fans.  This lead to a proliferation of slide-style cigar box guitars and a definite blues-leaning sound.  It's understandable why there weren't many five string banjo necks attached to the cigar box instruments coming out in the first ten years.

I get it.

However, we are starting to see the bluegrass and old time music guys catching on to the almighty cigar box.  Acts such as Spence's Rye are using traditional banjo clawhammer techniques in their playing. 

It's only time until we see a wider audience with cigar box guitars in the banjo crowd. 

So...who out there is making and playing five-string cigar box banjos???