Cigar Box Guitars For Sale
March 1st, 2010 | Author: Dan
Welcome to Humidor Guitars.
What is a cigar box guitar? Many people have never heard of them, seen them, or heard them being played. But, these instruments are part of the cornerstone of American blues music dating back to the late 1800s.
During the late 1800s, impoverished people, often slaves, wanted instruments, but could not afford a factory made guitar, so they improvised with an empty cigar box, a stick and some string or wire. The cigar box guitar was born.
A CBG could also be made from any type of box. A mailbox, a lunch pail, and even an empty gasoline can may be turned into a musical instrument using leftover parts found around the house.
Early blues legends such as Lightning Hopkins, Muddy Waters, and even Robert Johnson played CBGs. The twangy, earthy, bluesy sound of the Mississippi Delta is unique.
Of late, there has been a resurgence of interest in cigar box music, and several web sites have sprung up, attracting new blood and fueling the interest in these unique instruments. Aficionados can be musicians, builders, or neither, but they all share a love for CBGs and the music played on them.
Humidor Guitars builds their CBGs using red oak for the neck/fingerboard unless otherwise specified. Each CBG has a piezo transducer electronic pickup so it can be plugged into an amplifier. Each CBG is fitted with commercially available tuning pegs, and light gauge strings.
Each CBG is an individual and seldom are 2 of them alike. Empty cigar boxes are usually catch as catch can, so we don’t usually get a choice when it comes to the boxes, we have to take what we can find at the time.
Humidor Guitars makes CBGs that are very affordable, compared to some that are available. Others on the market feature magnetic pickups, tone and volume controls, and may cost from several hundred dollars, up to over one thousand dollars.
“So I went ahead and made me a guitar. I got me a cigar box, I cut me a round hole in the middle of it, take me a little piece of plank, nailed it onto that cigar box, and I got me some screen wire and I made me a bridge back there and raised it up high enough that it would sound inside that little box, and got me a tune out of it. I kept my tune and I played from then on.”
-Lightnin’ Hopkins
