CBG--The Return

Early on in this I commented that I was going to make myself a cigar box guitar at some point. Well, given some time off from work and an unbelievably sweet little girl (read: sleeps alot), I have made good on that threat. Being a first attempt there were of course several things I immediately would have liked to improve upon, but since the goal was to use as much material from around the house as possible, I am fairly pleased with it.

The neck inside the box itself was only glued to the lid, and the tension of the strings has caused it to bow (although not horribly) so next time I might nail the neck to the lid as well. Also, I neglected to make the headstock (where the tuning hardware is) lower than the fretboard, so the bolts acting as nut and bridge had to be way too big and made for a ridiculously high action--only good for slide guitar. Eh, that's the traditional way to play anyhow. Overall the sound is not too bad, some string buzz but nothing we wouldn't expect from someone's first homemade instrument.

To be extra-special traditional I also made a bottle-neck slide from a wine bottle. As it turned out I happened to have a glass cutter from a stained glass course in college, but I think you could use any pointed metal tool to score a line, then boil, then chill. Voila!

It is definitely an addicting hobby and I am already planning the next one. But of course in the mean time I need to figure out how to play the thing. Here is an early attempt at playing with the bottle-neck slide (Microwave Dave would be ashamed, but hey, we all gotta start somewhere):