Play a Cigar Box Guitar Today
I’ve been playing, or should I say learning, the guitar for over thirty years but I’ve only recently discovered the fun that can be had with a simple cigar box guitar.
If you have never heard of cigar box guitars I shall explain what they are. 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.
It’s quite easy to turn a cigar box into a basic guitar using a length of wood and a few guitar tuners and this is why they became a popular folk instrument. The simplest of cigar box guitars might have only one string, but they are commonly made with three strings and no frets. The steel strings would be fretted using a slide or a bottleneck.
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. There has been something of an explosion in interest in these simple home made instruments, partly fuelled by the internet. And you don’t have to use a cigar box to make home made musical instruments. Many builders of cigar box guitars use other boxes for the resonator including biscuit tins oil drums and childrens lunch boxes.
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.
