Secret of Home Made Musical Instruments

Although I've been playing guitar for many years it is only recently that I have discovered the fun that can be had with a cigar box guitar.

If you don't know what a cigar box guitar is I shall explain. A cigar box guitar is simply a basic guitar made using a wooden cigar box as the resonant body. They tend to be home made instruments that use a cigar box as the resonator in the same way that an acoustic guitar uses its guitar body to amplify the sound from the strings.

Back in the 19th century cigars were far more popular than they are today. Wooden boxes were used to package cigars from around the middle of the 19th century and etchings from the American civil war show soldiers playing a cigar box based fiddle.

Turning a cigar box into a guitar like instrument is relatively easy to achieve with a length of wood for the neck and a few tuning pegs. The simplest of cigar box guitars might have only one string, but they are commonly made with three strings and no frets. Fretting the steel strings would be achieved using a bottleneck or a piece of animal bone.

Cigar box based musical instruments are a traditional form of folk instrument that could easily be made using items that would otherwise have been thrown away. In recent years many people have discovered the fun that can be had playing and building home made guitars and other instruments. And home made guitar like instruments don't have to be based on a cigar box. Many people who build these home made guitars use other boxes for the resonator including oil cans, childrens lunch boxes and even biscuit tins.

So if you're struggling with augmeted thirteenths on your six string guitar toss it to one side and get yourself a three string cigar box guitar and make some noise.