Happy New cigarbox guitar Year

Hope you all had a great Christmas and maybe got some cool new toys. Had some problems with my internet and couldn't watch anything on Youtube for a while - bummer! Just completed two new CBGs. One of them was built for someone who asked for frets. I'm not keen on fitting them as they can be a pain and difficult to set up. Anyway I built it and it's a little beauty. The guy asked if it could be "ratty" so that's what I made. Trouble is I've fallen in love with it myself and it'll be hard to part with it. A lot of processing went into getting that "rough-as-shit-but-cool-and-also-plays-well" result. Here's a photo of it. Not happy with the strap so I'm gonna change it for a piece of tea-stained rope which is more in keeping with the style. I made a quick but rough vid of me noodling on it. You can see it here if you wish.

http://www.youtube.com/smojomusic#p/u/6/5khi9NPCQ2E

I'm taking a bit of time out from CBG making so I can complete some of my other projects. remember the nasty day-glo yellow electric 6 stringer I bought in a charity shop? Well it was never gonna stay that way. I decided to chop the body down to a small rectangular shape and cover it with pieces of old brass or tinplate to make a ratrod slider. I've made a start, I stripped all the parts off and cut the body. Just started with the metal plating. So far so good. I'll post some photos of it's progress soon.

Music-wise, I have been getting into some weird experimental stuff. Started out just experimenting with different effects on my pedals. I hit on some pretty heavy, dark sounding stuff which kinda reminded me of some kind of hellish workshop or satanic place. Some of them came out as workable pieces so I hit on the idea of doing a series of them along the theme of Dantes Divine Comedy also known as The Inferno. He describes his trip through the various circles of hell. The imagery of his poems is very inspiring and so I've used that to put suitable titles to my tracks. You can hear what I've recorded so far on my CigarBox Nation page here. look for the music section on the left of the page.

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/profile/smojo

Getting even weirder than that, I've got interested in circuit bending againv after getting a cool book at Christmas. Re-wiring old electronic toys and such to get weird sounds. I've made some great contact mics from piezo disks and been experimenting with sounds made from everyday objects, interference from electrical equipment etc. I haven't been able to make anything particularly musical from it yet but hoping to combine some of these sounds with some bluesy CBG playing for something a little different from the usual 12 bar shuffle. What I love about this whole thing is how diverse you can get. No need to ever get bored with your guitars. And best of all - it's a helluva lot of fun.