Cigar Box Guitar [networked learning pt. 1]

Ever since I saw Sir Paul McCartney show Nirvana how it’s done, I’ve wanted a cigar box guitar.

You should know that I’m not a musician. I can play a couple of chords (on a good day) and I don’t know a thing about guitar construction in general.

I am, however, quite materialistic. And I want a cigar box guitar. An electric one. Electric? That will require soldering. I also don’t know how to solder.

Grandpa passed away about 20 years ago, and Grandma said I could have his soldering iron, circa 1960s.

I’ll need some basic electronics from Radio Shack, some wood, and a cigar box. It turns out that cigar shops sell cigar boxes for about five bucks. Who knew?

Here’s an example of a guy building an electric cigar box guitar on YouTube. At one point, this guy shaves down the neck of his guitar with a hatchet. I won’t be doing that. I will be measuring and using power tools, thank you very much.

There’s also an oft-referenced help forum hosted by a cigar box guitar parts-supplier online at cigarboxguitar.com. I’ve found hundreds more discussion boards and forums all over the web about this.

I used the weekend to get started. I want to allow plenty of time for failure on this project. especially the soldering part. Every great project begins with procurement. I bought stuff.

I found a wood cigar box, a piece of 1 x 2 maple, and some electrical thingumajigs (my weak spot). Those long skinny wires are actually official guitar fret wire. I’ll have to decide whether or not to add frets to the guitar. In researching this project, I learned that frets have to be very precisely placed, like to the .001 inch (requires good math), or your guitar won’t play true notes. Not that I’ll be playing this thing anyway. I just want to have one.

My goal is to build an electric cigar box guitar that plays actual in-tune notes through an amplifier. To accomplish this, I’ll need to learn the principles of construction (I’m not using a kit, this is from scratch), how to place all the elements of the guitar so that plucking a string actually yields a pleasing sound (scale length and frequency), how to solder, and how to wire a guitar up for simple amplification.