two new guitars and other CBG news

Loads of stuff to tell you tonight. Crap going on at work so I need a wholesome distraction and a glass or two of red. I Started work on two new guitars as per last post. The two boxes are both Cuban and one is the green Ramone Allones and the other is a Partagas, which is a sort of orange colour with wood grain pattern on the paper front. It'll go great with the reddy/orange grain of the pitch pine neck. The green one will get an oak neck and maybe stain it dark like the Cuesta Rey box I made last. I picked up some cheap stainless steel sink drain strainers from the Pound Shop. I thought they'd look good used in the sound hole of a guitar. Don't think I'll use them on these though, nice boxes as they are. I'll put some piccies on when they start taking shape.

The case I'm making is on hold for a while till I get some guitars done. Been collecting various pieces of foam packing material for the inside moulding so that's the next stage. I tried the lid for the stomp box idea but it didn't sound too good. I could put a pick-up in it but really wanted one to be useful on it's own. I might ditch that idea for the case and make a stand-alone stomper. I got the old bass drum pedal on Ebay which was meant to be used with an old suitcase as the drum. Haven't got a case yet but might work on that idea next. I tried the pedal on a plastic waste bin (which sounds good when used as a hand drum) but I had problems co-ordinating my foot with my guitar playing.

A few of other ideas. Photograph some of my boxes and put them on the smojomusic website for people to choose to have made into a guitar. Had a few requests for tabs for my tunes on Youtube. I might eventually try to write them down and maybe produce an Ebook with palying tips and some tabbed music but that's a long way off yet.

Over on Shane Speal's forum he's talking about a documentary coming up on tv in the USA about CBG's. He's anticipating it generating a lot of interest in the subject and advising others CBGers to get busy making guitars and sorting out their websites. Which reminds me that I want to improve my smojomusic site. It's free webspace hosted by my ISP. I've used their own template and it's a bit basic. It will take webs made on Frontpage which I'd like to try but as with any computer software, there's a steep learning curve to get it right and it all takes up time. If my plans for semi-retirement come off in Spring I can get stuck into some serious CBG work.

I went to a guitar fair last Summer. I made enquiries about having a stall. There was no-one else doing anything with CBG's or even slide guitar playing. If I can get a dozen guitars made my June I might try a stall there. I think they'd go well due to the brilliant and cool nature of these little buggers.

I've made the decision to try put a short Youtube clip of each guitar I make so potential buyers can see they actually sound good (despite my ropey playing). Youtube has surprised me, I've had a lot more visits than I expected and some good feedback. Well that's about it for now but I'll leave you with this. Clinton and Blair thought they were being cool playing sax and a Strat but what they should have done is got themselves a cigar box guitar. We might have forgiven them a little :)