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Cigar Box Guitar – Goin to Brownsville

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 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 resonant body to make the guitar sound.

Back in the 19th century cigar smoking was far more popular than it is today. They began to be packaged in wooden boxes from around the middle of the 19th century and there are etchings of civil war soldiers sitting at a campsite where one of them is playing a fiddle made from a cigar box.

It’s quite simple to turn a cigar box into a basic guitar using a length of wood and a few tuning pegs and this is why they became a popular form of folk instrument. The simplest of cigar box guitars may only have one string, but they are more 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 many people have discovered the fun that can be had playing and building home made guitars and other instruments. And its not essential that you 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 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.