UK cigar box guitar revolution?

As mentioned in my last post I was meeting with another CBG nut - Mark C. Venue somewhat obscure - MacDonalds at Colne! Not the best location, a cold wet day and not much opportunity to play CBGs but nevertheless a very enjoyable one. We both brought some guitars, amps etc to show and it struck us how bizarre this whole thing is. Two middle aged blokes meeting up in Mac's car park surreptitiously examining goods out the back of the cars - like a couple of dodgy crack dealers! I think we talked non stop CBG for about two hours and it went in a flash.

Well, as Mark since said "Has it struck you that our meeting may have been historic and worthy of a blue plaque? It may well be that we are the first two UK cbg'ers to have ever met up...unless you know differently". Is this the start of the CBG revolution in the UK? If you've already started it with someone else here then drop me a line an tell us how it went. I have a few UK contacts now but haven't met any others yet. I certainly hope we can continue the friendship and look forward to the next time when we can explore our hobby/CBG passion some more and get to play some blues.

I'd like to feature some other UK/European CBG builders work on here so if you have a photo of a guitar you've built and want to share it with us, please email me with a photo and brief description.

Back to cigar box guitar building

Just had a relaxing week in Sunny Spain, (didn't find any nice cigar boxes) temperature was in the 70's F. Back home and it was freezing snowy Britain - yikes! So to cheer myself up I've had an afternoon CBG building. The two new ones are coming along great. I'm interested to see how the 2 stringer turns out and what I can do with it.

I've also got my Ebay orders for various electronic components through now so I can start experimenting with different amps.

I'm meeting up with a fellow UK CBGer on Thursday for the first time. We're bringing some stuff for a bit of "show and tell" over a coffee. Should be interesting.

I'm looking into doing a bit of music mixing and editing. It's a new direction for me and so there's another steep learning curve. I've downloaded some free software which seems pretty good. It's called Audacity. When I get some free time I'll try some simple multitrack stuff and see what comes of it.

2 new cigar box guitars started

I've started the next two CBGs but my plans have changed. Started with two pieces of timber for the necks. One oak one mahogany. They were already ripped down to size but the mahogany one was a bit on the narrow side so I decided this one would be a two-stringer, a first for me. I've rounded the back of the neck on this one and chosen a nice white and green Macanudo box. It's sort of narrow and quite deep, not the usual dimensions but I think it will work nice with the neck. I'll probably string it up in a fairly high tuning open D using unwound BE strings. The oak neck will get the green Ramon Allones box. Heading off to sunny Spain soon so CBG building will come to a halt while I do some serious research into chilling out, drinking beer and eating paella. Might even pick up the odd nice Spanish cigar box. Bummer eh?

cigar box guitar bridges saddles

As requested here's some info on bridges/saddles. First some principles as I understand them. The bridge/saddle is the main component that transfers the vibrations of the strings to the soundboard, in our case the cigar box lid. The most efficient materials are dense ones. Having said that the traditional material for acoustic guitars is bone which is not as dense as metal but I don't know why it is favoured. A CBG is never going to compete with a Martin or Gibson on sound quality but we do want to try to get a decent volume and tone out of it, given its limited capability, so it's worth experimenting with different types. Personally I like to use as much recycled material for my CBGs as possible. I have mainly just used scraps of hardwood like oak and mahogany and shaped them into an upside down "T" cross-section shape. I made one out of aluminium for the Quality Street tin and that worked well too. My last CBG had a bridge made from bamboo and aluminium and that also worked.

I think the positioning of the bridge on the soundboard must also have some bearing on the sound. I have seen many CBGs with the bridge placed right down at the bottom of the guitar. I haven't tried placing it there myself as logic tells me that the most sensitive area of the lid must be near the middle. I opted for a position about 2/3 down the lid which is roughly where most acoustic guitars have them. The guys that build them must know a thing or two so who am I to argue.

Another issue that may be of interest to the builder is how to secure the ball end of the strings as most modern acoustic guitars have the plastic pin arrangement in the bridge. Well most CBG builders adopt the "straight through neck" design. This lends itself to fairly easy construction and the facility to leave a short "tail" at the bottom of the box to anchor the strings to. Simply drill small holes to pass the strings through from underneath. I have included a small metal plate to take the strain of the strings off the wood, which would otherwsie tend to cut into it. Hope this helps.

What's next?

I need to build up some more guitars for stock so I'll probably start two new ones soon. I've got a nice green Ramon Allones box I was going to use last time so that will be one. I'll choose a white box for the other one. It would be nice to carry on with the CBG case I started but that's still on hold. The suitcase drum is on hold too for a while.

I'd love to get the old extension speaker converted to an amp now. I'm buying up electronic components on Ebay at present to make up some new amps. I've been using kits from Maplin so far (quite expensive) but have found some plans to build low wattage amps and want to experiment with them once I get all the bits I need. I'm enjoying the electronics side of this hobby and have some ideas for some other cool ideas for housing small amps like interesting old tins, boxes and maybe a section of the big bamboo poles I have. That's a way down the road for now though.

I've had a request to put a blog on here about making bridges. I'm collecting material for that and will post soon Sammi.

I'm wondering if there would be any mileage in producing some sort of an Ebook for sale. Aimed at beginner cigar box guitar builders/players. Maybe take the meaty sections from this blog, expand on them and add more tips and photos etc. I've thought about even running one-to-one CBG building courses. I'm getting carried away I know but this stuff really lights my fire.

Partigas and Cuesta Rey cigar box guitars

Here's my latest CBG - it's a Partigas box. It's got the new experimental bamboo slice bridge which I like the look of and sounds good too. Probably make some more. The slotted headstock was tricky and this was the one that got the end of my finger sliced off when making it! The neck is the first I've made using pitch pine - a hard species of pine with a lovely grain pattern, and finished with tung oil. The fret marks are burnt in. I've used the three soundhole configuration like the last one too. You can see it played with the CB amp at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oajIBEUfHQU



The previous new guitar was another Cuesta Rey box. I used the slotted headstock type and painted it yellow on the front to match the box. The neck is oak and stained dark brown and finished off with tung oil to feed the wood and give it a nice sheen. The strap was made from a nice old wooden bead belt. I particularly liked this guitar and it now has a new home in Ireland.

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

cigar box guitar building rules

I'm always looking for new angles on cigar box guitar building. I like to experiment, try new methods or materials in the hope of further improving the looks or playability and also for the fun of it. Sometimes they work - sometimes not. The last experiment was using classical guitar style machine heads requiring a slot to be cut out of the headstock. It resulted in me slicing a chunk out of my finger. Entirely my own stupid fault and I'm not sure it was worth it. I was hoping it would avoid the need for string trees giving me a steeper angle onto the tuner spindle from the nut. I found the angle was OK improving the pressure on the nut but due to the narrowness of the neck and straightness of headstock, there is a tendency for the outer strings to jump out of the threads of the bolts I use for nuts and therefor requiring some sort of string trees to guide the strings. My next experiment will be making nuts from aluminium bar with deeper slots to hold the strings more secure.

Another area for experiment is the bridge/saddle. So far I have tried using eye screws like many CBG builders but wasn't happy with the result. Most of my CBGs have saddles I make from hardwood like oak or mahogany, a sort of inverted T shape with shallow grooves for the strings. I was reading a posting on a forum about using banjo type saddles. They are narrow with feet at the ends which sit on the banjo skin and in fast look like the name suggests - a bridge. I got to the point on my latest build where I needed to make the saddle/bridge and rummaging through my scraps box, I found an odd thing which gave me inspiration. It was a broken slice of bamboo. Some time ago I bought some large diameter bamboo poles with the idea of making some percussion instruments. I had cut a slice off a piece but it had snapped in half forming a shape like half an onion ring. It struck me that the banjo type bridge could be made from a similar piece.
Using my bandsaw I cut a new slice about 6 mm wide then cut a piece about 1/3 of the diameter off it. I sliced a few mm off the outer curved edge to form a flat top. Then cut a narrow groove across that to hold a narrow aluminium saddle I made from some scrap. I think it looks and sounds good, I have fitted it to my latest CBG which you can see in another post.

My advice is, don't limit yourself to set ideas. By all means keep it in when when you find something that works well but try something new now and then, that's the fun of building these things, as someone said about CBG building "the rule is - there are no rules"

Great value drum kits

A drummer friend of mine is supplying great value drum kits and accessories. If you're interested in getting into some percussion and don't fancy the idea of a suitcase bass drum but prefer something more traditional, you might want to check out his site. Look at this "rhubarb" coloured kit, it's so yummy I could eat it! If you still want a beat up suitcase for a bass drum then he has some bargain priced quality pedals.

Click on the title of this blog to go there.

the weirdness of cigar box guitars

I had a weird experience. I was Googling CBG blogs and clicked on one of them to find "yours truly" embedded in someone elses blog. It was one of my Youtube vids and the guy was talking about it in very complimentary way. (Thanks whoever you are Chris). It set me off on a thought train about this whole CBG thing and how weird it is finding myself out there in cyberspace playing a guitar made from a cigar box for the world to see. I've never been one for wanting to attract attention but I got a weird sort of buzz from it. How did I get to that point and all the other stuff it's led me into. It's like one of those conversations you start off on one track and it goes here and there and ends up on another subject and you suddenly think "How did I get here What did we start out talking about"?

So back tracking to two years ago it all started for me when I was idly looking at old guitars on Ebay and I found a CBG for sale. Fell in love with it and had to have it. From there it was having a go at making my own which meant searching for boxes, machine heads, wood for necks etc. Then designing logos, writing up this blog, building a website, learning how to make short videos and putting them on Youtube. Now I'm making amplifiers from cigar boxes and a custom made case for the guitars. Making a bass drum from an old suitcase - it just gets weirder and more exciting all the time. I have people looking at my stuff from all over the world and e-mails from strangers who have become cbg buddies. Brilliant but bizarre when you stop and think about it and all this from a casual mooch on Ebay.

So how much weirder can this get. Well I had this bizarre thought today. How about a giant cigar box coffin? I can just see it now, a 6 foot long Monte Christo box with SMOJO written on the side and "Baby please don't go" playing on a CBG as it slowly disappears through the curtains and on to the incinerator. Talk about "smokin".