The Secret of Cigar Box Guitars

Cigar Box Guitar – Goin to Brownsville

I’ve been playing guitar for well over thirty years but I’ve only recently discovered the fun that can be had with easily made cigar box guitars.

If you don’t know what a cigar box guitar is I shall explain. A cigar box guitar is, as the name suggests, a guitar made from a cigar box. These tend to be home made folk instruments that use a cigar box as the resonator body in the same way that an acoustic guitar uses its resonant body to make the guitar sound.

Way back in the 19th century many more people regularly smoked cigars. 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. 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 fok instrument made from rubbish such as empty cans or cigar boxes. In recent years there has been increased interest in these simple instruments with people sharing their building expertise, tips and advice on the internet. And its not essential that you use a cigar box to make home made musical instruments. Many creative cigar box guitar builders use anything from oil drums to biscuit tins and lunch boxes to make some fine sounding instruments.

So if you are struggling with complex chords on your six string guitar why not put it to one side and get yourself a three string cigar box guitar and get back to some roots music.