How to build a cigar box guitar
How to build a cigar box guitar
Free Plans at www.cigarboxnation.com.
Still more guitars…
I have been making more guitars, and have ended up selling some of them before they were even finished!
I set up a web site for selling them. Visit the site at:
Some CBG music videos
Seasick Steve plays a conventional 6 string guitar with three of the strings removed. Here is a clip of him playing Doghouse Blues on the Jools Holland show.
Ben Prestage plays a two neck, three string LoweBow. Here is a clip of him playing in Deland Florida in 2007.
Some more Cigar Box Guitars
I have been busy in the shop making some more CBGs. I sold a few for Christmas, so I didn’t really have time to photograph them. But, here are a few of them.
Building some bunk beds
Our two grandsons are coming to stay with us for a while, so we thought we should get some bunk beds for them. After shopping around, we decided it would be easier and cheaper to make some. We found some plans online at:
This is a bunk bed with a pull out trundle bed underneath. Bunk Beds Unlimited offered a hardware package for sale, and it was cheaper and more convenient to just buy the hardware pack, so we ordered it along with the plans. That done, it was off to Home Depot for the lumber.
We needed about a dozen 2×6’s, some 2×2’s, and a few 2×4’s, so we picked through the pile, trying to find the straightest ones that were in the best shape. We took them home and got to work cutting them to size.
Once we got the basic frame pieces cut, I fired up the router and used a 1/2 inch rounding bit to round off the edges. The end pieces and a couple of the rails are done and ready to be stained.
We need to make another Home Depot run to buy the stain so we can match it to the dresser in the kid’s bedroom.
More to follow…
Discounts available for BikeMP3.Com Customers
I have been advised that a shipment of the MP3 players for the Goldwings has arrived and they are ready to be shipped.
The introductory pricing has been extended for another month. So, till the end of May, you can get the MP3 player for only $129.99, including shipping!
If you order one of either the MP3 players or the iPod interface, and you mention that you saw it on IggyTheBiker.Com, you will receive $5.00 off your order. Contact them by email first, (sales@bikemp3.com) and they will send you a discount code to use with your order.
Get ‘em while they’re hot!!!
I built a Cigar Box Guitar
I built a guitar from a cigar box and some spare wood and parts. Here is what it ended up looking like:
Cigar Box Guitars
The Blues is considered by most musicians to be the only truly American form of music. It traces it’s roots back over a hundred years ago to the slaves, working in the fields. They could not afford a factory built guitar, so they improvised with anything they could find. An old cigar box, a long piece of wood, and some string and they had an instrument.
Early blues artists like Lightning Hopkins and Muddy Waters started out using cigar box guitars, or CBG’s. CBG’s have a wonderful, swampy, bayou kind of sound that modern instruments just can’t duplicate.
There has been a resurgence of CBG builders and players, and there are several web sites dedicated to the building and playing of these truly American instruments. You can also find quite a few videos on YouTube. Check it out if you have time.
These are some CBGs made by members of CigarBoxNation.Com
Update on the MP3 Player Installation
I finished up fiddling with the MP3 player today. I figured out what the problem was with the USB jump drive was. The drive I was trying to use was formatted in NTFS, when it needed to be FAT or FAT32. It also had 2 partitions on it, one was formatted in CDFS so that it could boot with it’s propriety software that came with the jump drive. Once I fixed the partition issue and reformatted it, it worked fine.
I was looking at the AUX input and basically decided that I would probably never plug anything into it, and if I did, I have no idea what it would be, unless it was another MP3 player, which makes no sense. So, I did not do anything further with it.
I have loaded up my songs on a spare SD card I had lying around, stuck it in the player, and went for a shakedown ride to see if I had any loose connections that might cause problems. After about 30 miles over some pretty bumpy roads, everything stayed intact and the unit works like a charm.
Overall, this player does what it is supposed to do. It stores almost 600 songs (if I don’t want to see the NO DISC flashing) or almost 10,000 otherwise. I will limit myself to the 6 folders with 99 songs, and if I want more, I can just pop another SD card in the unit and go on my way.
This was incredibly easy to install. I just took the seat off, plugged the cable into the vacant CD connector, ran the cable under the seat and up into the trunk, and stuck it to the inside of the trunk lid with Velcro. It took less that 30 minutes from start to finish! No drilling holes, no splicing wires, no soldering, no nothing.
In my mind, the functionality it doesn’t have is more than made up for in ease of installation, and simplicity of use. I would recommend this unit to anyone who wants to KISS like me. At roughly $130.00, it seems like a bargain. You can see this unit at BikeMP3.Com