Make Your Own Cigar Box Guitar

For when you can’t get to your local pawn shop

Cigar Box Guitars have a long history. Blind Willie Johnson made one when he was five. Lightning Hopkins made one too. Billy Gibbons of ZZ-Top has one. So does what’s his name, the singer from The Presidents of the United States of America. And that veteran of wacky build-it-yourself music Tom Waits has used one as well. There’s even a National Cigar Box Guitar Museum located in York, PA (I gotta visit that place).

Wanna get in on this crazy movement? Well now you can as makezine.com shows you how to make a cigar box guitar of your very own. The video below shows the traditional build of a three-stringed instrument using twine, wood, screws and (of course) a cigar box as the resonator.

Then they juice it with some cheap hobby-store electronics and a makeshift amp made out of an old tape recorder. This is pretty cool!

See Also:
makezine.com
cigarboxguitars.com