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So here's a fresh blues-harp based Christmas tune. Merry Christmas and if you wish, have a listen, if you like, free download via GrrrRecords: https://tinyurl.com/w23oozf ; -Glenn Kaiser

So... lovin' this little one! -Glenn

My workshop is, like most, a converted space, a small space: every machine I own is mounted on casters to allow for easy (?) rearrangement of things for a different hand or machine process.  In this space I have also learned the discipline of demarcation; when a process is finished tools and supplies are returned to their designated storage drawer, spot or container and precious room is freed to permit another construction activity.  I'm actually pretty good at it, having refined it through years of furniture and then guitar building. 

But, here's an admission, on the days I do final assembly and set up on a cigar box guitar or one of the 4 string tenor electrics I have made, I become an irresponsible kid again.  I'm swept back to days when I was 11 or 12 and discovered the joy of making things; days when my Dad would come home from work and find me hunched at his workbench, every tool he owned scattered over every available surface of his shop, pots of glue and paint, bits of wire and batteries strewn everywhere as I worked with a focus so rapt that even hunger could not interfere.  Fast forward several decades and on the days I do final assembly and set up,  my "discipline of demarcation" dissolves as I am wholly and completely  absorbed in the process of revealing the guitars voice.  Occasionally, during the process I will run up against the ever increasing pile of tools on the bench but even that can't break the joyus spell and induce me to put some of them away or to organize the process.   This  can go on for 4 or 5 hours sometimes, supper goes unmade, the dog is hopping from one foot to the other, desperate to be let outside to relieve himself and, in the end my bench ends up looking like this:

Chaotic as hell, but it tells the tale of just how much fun you can have bringing life to a guitar.  And just when you think it couldn't get better among that chaos an even greater enjoyment awaits, playing the thing and , if your lucky, playing with other people!

By the way, the guitar in the photos is a 4 string tenor electric, it has a single bridge mounted humbucker.  The body is made from salvaged eastern white pine, the neck is maple and the fretboard walnut.  It is constructed in the Fender style with a bolt on neck.  The finish on the guitar is something I call, "Almost blue" and is a combination of wood stain, watercolour paint, shellac and polyurethane.  For the very keen of eye, yes the inflatable neck rest I use is a bag from a wine carton....recycle, re-use and rock on.

Happy building and playing.

I have a cb gitty delta 3 pole pickup harness wired to the jack. I tried to add a volume knob but im not getting any sound? Is it as simple as adding a knob to a piezo? Ive done that without a problem. Also how close to the strings does the pickup need to be? 

Thanks

Hi, all, recently finished  gitty 4string kit, used the shorter banjo kit bridge, filed it down quite far, where the  ball ends are almost touching the top. Plays quite well, but i tuned it down to FCFA Because i formerly played 4string e.Bass,the GDGB tuning sounded too high for me.Also ran a ground wire from output jack to barrelhouse bridge.Lipstick pickup very clean through amp.Drilled access hole on back near output jack and installed star disk over it.

Hi to everyone!

I just joined a few days ago and I wanted all of you to get some information about my background. 

I am living in Snellville, Georgia ( near Atlanta) and have been here in my home for the past 24 years. I grew up in Birmingham ,Alabama and  graduated from Ramsay High School in 1965. I attended UAB for several years as a working commuter student. I had a long working career as a branch manager, regional manager and sales manager. I am now retired and spend most of my time working in my yard or around the house, walking my dog and playing one of my several guitars. My wife Sylvia have been married for 36 years. Our two sons are grown now and live here in the Atlanta area with their own family. I started playing guitar in 1956 when Elvis was popular. I grew up in the 60's during the "Rock  & Roll" age. I was converted to country music in 1968 when I listened to a Johnny Cash album, "Folsom Prison Blues". I now play lap steel guitar, standard guitar  and now, CBG. I listen to and play old country, Western swing,and Hank Williams Sr. I got hold of a 3 string CBG about 3 months ago and It has taken me over. I simply can't put it down. I hope to get involved with this group to help me learn and hopefully contribute.

Loading up the shop.  The six string guitars draw the people in.  Just in case you're interested, the guitars in the rack are as follows:  Silvertone Stratotone Jupiter Reissue, Silvertone U2 reissue, Samick Acoustic, Teton "mini-jumbo" travel guitar, and Teton Baritone acoustic/electric. A semihollowbody Gretsch, a relic telecaster,  and a hollowbody Loar with 2 dogear P90 pickups stand guard at the front window.  Also have a couple of  vintage amps to get the shopper's attention.

It's amazing how interested people are in 3 string guitars once I get them in the shop.  A quick demo makes believers out of them.  The homey space where folks can jam in comfort has proven to be very valuable.  This will become a lesson space for off-hours

For the past few months, well actually more than a year, I have been working at building 4 string electric guitars.  I have tried to apply all that I have learned in making cigar box guitars but of course I have looked at the "real thing", the Fenders and the Les Pauls and the Parkers and the Rickenbacker and the Ibanez.  For aesthetic reasons, and because most of my favourite players play Fender guitars, I looked at Leo Fender's creation closely. What I found was innovation in the classic american style and by that I mean innovation without undue regard for established or traditional ways of doing things: a willingness to imagine or reimagine something within a new set of circumstances or conditions and to change the subject, often in fundamental ways, to fit a new reality . I am willing to bet that most people who called themselves "luthiers" around the time Fender introduced the Broadcaster were appalled and probably refused to acknowledge that it was a guitar at all. 

Leo Fender's guitar is nothing short of the "Declaration of Independence" of guitars.  He built a guitar that could rock like hell and he built it for anyone who could save a few pennies a week.  He looked a tradition in the face and said there must be a better and easier way.  He considered new materials including improved screws that resulted from the experience of wartime necessity.  With these new and better fasteners he concluded the best way to simplify what is a complex and time consuming job, setting the neck of an instrument, was simply to screw the neck to the body resulting in a significant reduction in build time and cost.  Imagine the uproar at the meeting of the luthiers guild! 

The neck Fender designed was, in similar fashion, intended to overcome the complexity of the scarf joint that attaches a headstock at an angle to the neck, creating the break angle and the resultant force necessary to hold the strings down on the nut.  Fender's neck was and is flat, with break angle provided by relieving the face of the headstock thereby placing the tuners at a level below the nut. This neck and headstock could be cut in a simple process from a single piece of wood (reducing cost).  I imagine that the development of the neck was iterative;  the shape was decided on but upon testing was found to have failed to have created enough break angle to ensure proper tension across the strings given the in line tuner design.  That design resulted in a  lower effective break angle and consequent lower tension with the increasing distance of the tuner from the nut.  The result was that strings 1 through 4 (DGBE) had a tendency to emit an unwelcome buzz.   I like to imagine a young apprentice lamenting the neck's failure to Leo Fender, whereupon, he, Fender, drilled a couple of holes in the headstock face, and using a washer or an offcut from a guitar nut, fastened them over the misbehaving strings with a...gasp...screw, and the string tree was invented: problem solved.  

I don't think the solid body was Fender's idea, that seems to have come from elsewhere (Merl Travis, Les Paul???) but who did a better job of dropping in pickups into a nice slab of wood? Not to mention the Fender body shapes which seem to share in the wonderful ostentation of the streamlined era of industrial manufacturing while having the added bonus of actually providing ergonomic benefits. Those shapes are so aesthetically right they have become standards that you must acknowledge if you are going to build something and call it an electric guitar. 

Which is what I have been puttering with and it should come as no surprise that I have embraced Fender's genius and tried to incorporate his time and cost saving innovations.  My results fall a good deal short of anything Fender builds but resulted in a playable instrument with, I think, reasonably good looks.The body is pine, salvaged from an old headboard, the neck is maple - a leftover from a dresser project.  The fretboard is walnut.  The neck is, of course, screwed to the body with brass screws that fit into threaded brass receivers let into the neck.   I understand this is how they do it for the more expensive Fenders and I liked the idea of being able to take the neck off multiple times without worrying about messing up the pilot holes.The  truss rod is a fixed steel bar glued into a slot in the neck. The fret scale is 24.5 inches and the overall length is 38 inches. The centre of balance is right where the fretboard ends.

The headstock and the neck are fashioned from a single piece of maple.  The headstock is brought to thickness simply by slicing about 3/8" from the headstock face.  This provides the difference in height between the tuners and the nut and generates the required pressure at the nut.  Of course for the two high strings a bit of help is required in the form of the string tree. You can see in the picture, I've made mine out of a bit of used nut flipped upside down with a hole drilled between the string slots.

The speed with which this kind of guitar can be built is remarkable and the good news is there aren't any downsides to the method that I can see...but then I guess the last 70 years of amazing music from people like Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Roy Buchanan, Susan Tedeschi,  Bill Frisell and Stevie Ray Vaughn have already, and most conclusively, proven that.

Happy building and playing.

From now until the end of December, I'm doing the brick and mortar thing.  There's a refurbished mall in Marion, Indiana's downtown that the housing authority is really pushing to revitalize.  Got a good deal on a Nov-Dec only lease.  The most happening restaurant in the county is in the basement and I'm right in the middle of the line of sight when customers enter the building through the front door.  I'm still filling the place up, but I've got a basic plan for the space.  Here's to hoping to convert some 6 string players. . . 

Because I found the scale length I used to make the guitars I have given up playing them as the neck and fret spacing was to long/wide for me.
Consequently I went for ukuleles which I find more playable and manageable. After trying the different sizes I like the tenor best, closely followed by the baritone.
I will do another guitar in the future possibly using the 23" scale length suggested to me...that makes it 4 inches longer than a baritone uke...so I am still not sure.
Anybody got any ideas concerning scale length vs personal physical characteristics??

To all my great friends on here, I just want to apologize to those that I have missed your great videos and failed to like and comment. I have been really stressed from training a new person and working with a brand new recently released from training person. It is like training two people sometimes. So when I get home from work at 8 am I do my mile and a half walk and then crash until 3 or 4 pm. Then the wife is home and I try to spend time with her. I usually watch your videos at work in between calls,but since I am training I can't do this. And they seem to like to block you tube from us at work. Just wanted you all to know I haven't forgot you. Keep up the great videos and I will try to get caught up.

Q: Who were or are you main musical influences?

Kevin: Many would probably laugh at the vast array of music that I love and has influenced me. The British band The Electric Light Orchestra epitomizes my typical hybridizing of musical styles and genres, with Jeff Lynne's always reliably captivating slide guitar work sealing it for me. I learned a lot from Lynne and the band about songwriting and arranging and unusual vocals and symphony, even something as "trivial" as the drumbeats Bev Bevan used in their songs. Besides that, I would have to say John Denver was a huge influence. Don't laugh! That man was a fantastic songwriter and vocalist. I wept the day he died, because we lost a fine artist. How to write excellently crafted songs and melodies I learned listening to his music. I've been influenced by rock and roll artists more than blues artists, which may surprise some, given my passion for cigar box slide guitar. But I'll tell ya: I love the blues! I'm obsessed with slide and bottleneck guitar. Since I couldn't play lead guitar worth spit, due to having stupid fingers, I picked up slide guitar. Actually, the truth is, I was an insomniac for a lot of my life. A chronic one. Because of this, my fine motor skills, which I would have used to learn blistering slide guitar, was chronically challenged. I couldn't get my fingers to work the way I wanted, no matter how much I practiced. So, under the tutelage of Lynne, Dwayne Allman, Joe Walsh and other rock sliders' tracks, I picked up slide guitar--and did so like a fish to water. I can indeed play the Allman Brothers' "Statesboro Blues" riffs with him. I'm soaked with sweat and exhausted by the end, but I can do it! (laughs)

Vocally, John Denver, Sam Cook, Russ Taff, Sherman Andrus and Daryl Hall start a lengthy list of singers I reveled in.

Dropped off some pick art and guitar neck coat racks at the Muncie, IN-based music store.  You may be more familiar with their online division, World Music Supply.  They will be carrying my stuff in the brick and mortar store.  It felt really good to get the things I build into their shop. 

I am trying to convince them that the CBG market is untapped in our area and that it is ripe for sales.  Maybe I'll drop one off as a gift for the employees to check out.  They have zero guitars that are specifically geared toward slide and I think my guitars would be an ideal way to get folks into slide guitar and they could set them up to sell some resonators and lap steels in the future.  Does anyone else have experience in this area?  I could use some pointers if you have.

Hi all,Keith here,i have only just joined CBN so pretty new to it all,im doin my best to play the 3 string but need a little help on a certain piece of music,can any body help in my quest to find TAB on Ry Cooders Feelin bad blues?but has to be for the 3 string,i have viewed various cats playing it but without TAB i am at a loss!!! thanks for what i hope shall be a fruitful search.

Sold a few guitars and made some new friends this weekend.  The highlight for me was when my vendor neighbor Soaring Eagle came over after I had started playing a 3 string brownie pan guitar to ask me to turn it up and play more often because 1. it drew customers to not only my booth, but the booths around me; and 2. he just plain loved the music.  Ducktail Run and the two other festivals going on in the county, the Jonesboro River Rally and Fairmount's James Dean Days always brings in huge crowds and it was a blast.  I always enjoy watching the face on the guys who loudly say:  "that's not a real guitar, it's something you hang on the wall." after I politely explain that it is a working man's instrument made in my shop and I'd not be ashamed to play it next to somebody playing a pricey guitar made in a guitar factory.  They start to say something else but, by then, I've had the opportunity to plug it in and show them what it sounds like.  After that, I have made not only a believer, but a new friend.  Once they hear what such simple instruments can do, they are drawn in and want to know more.  Some buy something, some don't.  But they all have fun hanging out for a few.  And they will look for me next year.  Can't wait!.

just saw the tiki mask guitar made by Mr Mojo Johnson on the Gitty Gang Show, how cool  is that. I bet the sales of tiki masks has dramatically increased. I know what my next build will be.

This weekend, I was at Frankton, Indiana's Heritage Days.  The whole festival was incredible.  A VERY small town put on an outstanding event.  Live music going on almost nonstop for the whole weekend.  Included a car show, tractor show, tons of vendors,

It's like fairs were when I was a kid.  The whole community came out to support the local event and have some fun.  It was really heartwarming to be there in Frankton this past weekend.  I guess the good old days aren't completely gone. .

Heritage Days Opening Ceremony Video

Hi all, this just came up for sale on ebay!

I posted more info about this wonderful homemade guitar below the photo

check out the headstock and fretboard!

This instrument is from Kentucky and found in Fallsburg, KY. It is handmade from a “THE ORIGINAL PALMA, W.H. SNYDER & SONS, INC.” cigar box, with hand carved walnut neck and pegs.

Records indicate that W.H. Snyder & Sons of 91 W. Main St., Windsor, PA filed as a corporation in 1920, 1921, and March 1959 via PA records (exact date is unknown).

The cigar box has cracks and a loose glued wooden block that was either inside or serves as a string bridge.

If you enjoy learning about the history of early Blues and cigar box guitars - There is a website and online photo museum  with many old and antique cigar box instruments.

The website is at this link  https://www.homemade-guitars.com

There is also cigar box guitar music and videos.

- This guitars was found on eBay for sale at this link https://www.ebay.com/itm/233345551994

Since I have enough CBGs around, I send most of the ones I make to other people, not a lot, but some.  I have sent them as for as Italy, to Oklahoma and now have one that goes to southern Texas. I have looked for boxes the right size for mailing, but they want me to buy 25-50 of them at a time for more money than I want to spend.  I think it would be a great idea if you guys at CBN would offer mailing boxes for sale.  Something like a 38 x 6 x 10 would work great for me, and sell them one to maybe five at a time.  Any thoughts?

Since I’ve been involved with the homemade musical instrument community, I’ve noticed more and more coincidences in my life. I’m not sure if they’re happening more often or if I’m just more attune to them, but I’ve noticed increased synchronicity over the past year or so. Here’s another fun coincidence that happened recently. I wanted to share it with the Cigar Box Nation.

About a month ago, a book about jug bands showed up in my Amazon feed. I’ve always thought jug bands were interesting, but never really took the time to learn the history of this music style. I decided to buy the book and it arrived a couple days later. I set it on my bookshelf not sure when I’d get around to reading it. As luck would have it, I had plans to visit a buddy in Phoenix the first weekend in September. I brought the book, Louisville Jug Music: From Earl McDonald to the National Jubilee by Michael L Jones, along to help pass the time.

I finished the book that weekend and it was a really good read. I did not realize how much jug music influenced other American musical styles or where it came from. Not only did I learn a lot about the past, present, and future of the genre, I also discovered there is a National Jug Band Jubilee which takes place in Louisville, KY every year. Coincidentally, the event was happening the following Saturday, September 14. I told my wife about this string of coincidences and she said, “It’s a sign. You need to go.” I made some quick travel arrangements and before I knew it, I was on my way to Louisville. I arrived at the Jubilee shortly after the first band took the stage on Saturday.

L to R: washboard, cigar box ukulele, dobro, bass, jug

The first thing I did was visit the merchandise table to see what kind of swag they had for sale. After purchasing a T-shirt and a bumper sticker, I noticed Michael L Jones - the author of the book I mentioned above - was sitting at a nearby table eating lunch. I walked over and told him about the series of coincidences that brought me to Kentucky. He grinned ear to ear, signed my book (which I just happened to bring with me), and welcomed me to the festival. I sat down in the grass and watched a handful of artists deliver some lively performances. The musicians played instruments like banjos, kazoos, washtub basses, washboards, guitars, and, of course, jugs. I even spotted a cigar box ukulele on stage.

At 4:00 PM the music paused and there were free jug band instrument classes. Led by known performers, these sessions focused on the basics of playing the jug, bones, kazoo, and washboard. They all appealed to me, so I had a hard time deciding which one to attend. I ended up at the jug playing workshop led by Arlo Leach. After one class and a little bit of practice, I’d say I’m still a novice jug player at best. Regardless, it was a lot of fun and I learned something new. At the conclusion of the classes, all the students took the stage and performed a song for the audience. I thought about how many coincidences led to this moment. Just one week ago I knew virtually nothing about jug music, and yet here I was playing a plastic milk jug on stage at the National Jug Band Jubilee. It was quite an experience to say the least.

That's me playing the jug (circled in red)

As the sun dropped towards the horizon, I watched the rest of the performances and found myself consistently entertained. The musical acts were great and so were the festivalgoers. The crowd was a mixture of folks from all age groups and walks of life, but everyone was in a good mood. It was an uplifting day and one I won’t soon forget. After returning home, I found myself digging through the recycle bin looking for empty milk jugs or water bottles I could blow into. I spent the latter part of yesterday checking my local antique shops for vintage whiskey jugs. I chuckled a bit when I realized I’m probably the first guy to come back from Kentucky and look for empty whiskey containers. I’m sure that doesn’t happen every day.

See the full album of Jug Band Jubilee pics here: https://cigarboxnation.com/photo/albums/national-jug-band-jubilee-9-2019