new camcorder and Youtube

Hi folks, I'm still here but not been doing much on the cigar box guitar front lately. I seem to have been more involved with my electronic activities. I really feel I need to get on with playing, experimenting and recording some music so the building side of things has taken a bit of a back seat. You know how it is with these things. The creative drive seems to get focussed in one particular direction for me and my other stuff goes on the backburner.

For some time I've been toying with getting a camcorder but didn't want to spend too much money on one and didn't want to get distracted with a new hobby. The main reasons for getting one is that the stuff I put on Youtube is quite low res because it's done on my little digital camera. It only allows me to do about 5 minutes or recording too so that's the reason I've not put any new stuff on for a while even though I've kept promising it. Well I found a cheap but adequate camcorder in a second-hand shop and so I'm intending to do a few vids soon. I want to show people my reso 6 stringer I built and a few of my circuit bent projects so don't give up on me just yet. I'll post on here when I've put something new on.

And here are a couple of new vids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ThCkwj6VE my electric resonator guitar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RfWqeO9HvY and my "333" three string solid body cbg style guitar

June and a little cigar box guitar news

Just heard from my mate over in Manchester that he's planning a CBG gig at his local pub in November. One of our top uk CBG gigging men - Hollowbelly will be playing. He describes himself as punk blues and it'll be a great gig. Provisionally it's gonna be 26th Nov but I'll confirm nearer the time. If you're in that neck of the woods, be sure to come along for a brilliant evening. I'm gonna be there!

I'm having trouble with bloody Youtube again. Taking forever to load the page, then it's all screwed up and I can't get into it to upload anything new or answer any comments. So my apologies if you are waiting for a reply or looking for new material from me. Can't figure out what's wrong but they probably changed something in the name of progress and my ageing laptop can't handle it. Hoping to get a new one soon, then I can spend more time being creative with it rather than trying to fix it.

I'm still not making any new guitars as I'm fully immersed in holidaying, decorating, running around after old folks and when I do get some time to be creative, it's a bit of electron-trickery/circuit-bending rather than CBG building. Just completed my NAND gate oscillators in the old box and it's a pretty wicked machine. I'm hoping to get to grips with it's music making potential and somehow weave it's manic pulsey noisies into something listenable, ideally a bit of CBG palyed over it. Watch this space.

I do have a couple of CBGs for sale. If you want details just email me.

A side benefit of CBG playing for me is that it pushed me toward fingerstyle playing to the point that even when playing standard 6 stringers, I hardly ever use a plectrum now. In fact it feels quite awkward. The limit of three strings to play with on a CBG made it fairly easy to get into fingerstyle plucking. You just need a thumb and one or two fingers. Glad to say I still have all four fingers which I was trying to use when I first attempted fingerstyle in pre-CBG days. I realise now that two are plenty, in fact many of the old time blues players just used thumb and one finger. I think Blind Gary Davis did and he often played a 12 stringer! So if you've tried and failed fingerstyle on 6 strings before. Try getting to grips with it on a 3-string CBG, you'll find it falls into place quite easily.

Bye for now, enjoy summer, it's gone quicker than you think.

tuning lessons for cigar box guitar

Hi all. just uploaded some lessons to Youtube. Been thinking for a while that you may have built a cbg or maybe bought one and it's gone way out of tune. You've had difficulties getting it to sound right etc. So I thought it would be good to do a few vids for beginners, to get you back on track enjoying your guitars. OK they're a bit rough and ready and I tend to repeat myelf a bit but I did them more or less as first takes, unrehearsed and just as the ideas came into my head. I didn't want to spend too much time, just enough to get the information across. Take a look and if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or two. Hope you find them helpful. Check them out on my Youtuibe channel here.

http://www.youtube.com/smojomusic

new cigar box amplifier

Just finished a new cigar box amp. Powered by 9v battery, it has on/off switch, power on LED and volume control. Up to about half volume the sound is pretty clean. Turn it up and it gets progressively distorted providing a nice dirty sound ideal for some mean slide playing on a CBG. You can see/hear it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oajIBEUfHQU

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 :)

A challenge to all you cigar box guitar builders

Not a cigar box guitar but a challenge to your instrument building skills. Check out this baby and see if you can make one for me :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmoJj9cvOJU

Cigar box guitar playing on YouTube

Been experimenting with some short videos on YouTube to demonstrate my CBGs. Here's a bit of slow improvisation inspired by the Delta. Check out my others at

http://www.youtube.com/smojomusic