Cigar Box Guitar Articles

Create frets for cigar box guitars using copper wire from a craft store. Tools: hammer & needle nose pliers.

Shane Speal commissioned this instrument to incorporate elements of Ted Crocker's Honeydripper movie guitar...

Standard and alternate tunings for cigar box guitar. Includes 3-string, 4-string and 6-string.

This simple hinged board gets perfect glue joints on cigar box guitar headstocks. Easy design for any builder.

Ukulele body is made from an actual styrofoam beer cooler... and it sounds great! This has got to be the most freakish-looking uke ever!

This strange instrument was built in an hour using an antique bellows handle and several modern cigar box guitar parts.

The guitar is a triple neck consisting of a 4-String,1-String, and 3-String. The body of the guitar is built to the measurements of a trian

New Orleans musician, Bob Ice and his 2-string plywood bass fiddle. Zanco says, "It produces a very effective sound; if you would

LIVE CHRISTMAS EVE: WORLD’S LOUDEST MUSIC WITHOUT AMPLIFICATION FROM A NON-MUSICAL INSTRUMENT My hometown of York PA has one of the most...

Hi all, it's Shane Speal. The content from PoorMansGuitar.com is being brought over to CigarBoxGuitars.com in order to consolidate two...

Today, I'm answering a question from a reader: Dear Shane: Is it better to learn on a cigar box guitar that has a fretted neck or one...

Download and print this page for an easy to use 23" fretting scale template, as shown on page 173 of Making Poor Man's Guitars.

I put a Lace Alumitone Matchbook pickup in a $25 cigar box guitar! This has to be the most unfair gear review ever! This was my version o

The mic is perfect for blues harmonica or lo-fi vocals...and all you need is an old handset and guitar jack. Follow along with the video.

Two of the most freakish guitars in the Cigar Box Guitar Museum are by Tone-A-Cane Copper Pipe Guitars and Pete Regan’s Metal Guitars.

John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful discovered this patent and mailed it to Shane Speal several years ago. It shows a rectangle guitar...

Photos taken from MIM.org Among the 15,000 instruments under curation at the massive Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix AZ, the...

When someone mentions folk art instruments, a screaming electric lap steel guitar made with old guitar parts on a six pound slab of mahogany

Have you ever noticed the wooden back piece of a conventional banjo. These are called resonators and their job is to keep the sound...

These plans for an experimental diddley bow use an electric door bell clapper as a Dick Dale-style hyper tremolo picker. Fascinating...