Cigar box guitar and variations

How hard is it to build a cigar box guitar, ukulele, banjo, or other string instrument at home?

I found a cigar box in my basement, doing a very important job (it's seriously the only place in the house that our hole won't go walkabouts).  Later that day, I saw a huge pile of cigar boxes in an antique shop.  They must have cost more than they did when full of cigars, but that shop is well known for over pricing most things.

Perhaps, this is a sign from the universe.  With my recent interest in string instruments, I decided to ask the font of all knowledge, my library.



That was unexpected.

Pleasantly unexpected.

The creativity in these books is amazing.   I feel like I could even make one.  There are cigar box guitars, tin ham can ukulele,  briefcase, even olive oil cans.



Some of these sound pretty nifty, not like I expected at all.



I had no idea this world was so vast.  It lowers the bar to enter stringed music to anyone who can upcycle. Even strings can be made from upcycled materials, apparently.   Bailing wire was mentioned.  

Instead of sounding all the same, each instrument has a unique voice.

We won't be sacrificing/upcycling the family cigar box any time soon, but I now know what to look for and have an idea or two tickling my brain.

Thank goodness you included a picture of your cigar box doing its very important job... You had lost me completely until I saw 'the hole' - technically it's a thing that makes a large hole into a small hole - and I recognize its value and importance.

Big business has taken over so much of our lives, we tend to forget that huge areas of music were developed from upcycled, homemade instruments. It tended to be looked down on because the wealthy could afford pianos or to pay people to entertain them. But many instruments had very basic beginnings - horn instruments made out of animal horns, flutes made out of long bird bones, and more recently, instruments hammered out of the tops of metal shipping barrels.

I was going to call it a timbit, but not sure who would get the reference.

If I ever do make something like this, the hole would make a good template for the sound hole in the guitar.  It amuses me as this little plastic hole was one of my favourite toys as a kid.  It was such an important part of music in the house.  

Earlier this winter I made a small gourd instrument, the first instrument I’ve made that actually works well—a gourd back, birch bark front, with the neck being seasoned beech wood saved from the firewood, a cherry fingerboard, and an ash spike, a floating maple bridge, and strings of nylon fishing line. The instrument is three-stringed and fretless, and uses hide glue. Tuning pegs are also maple.

I would say it is the most soulful instrument I can remember ever playing and on most days I tend to prefer it over anything not homemade. My friend also says it feels better than other string instruments she’s held, and attributes it to the materials. I feel like there is something magical in making something that may not have a name, may not look like any other instrument in the world, but definitely has a soul. I can’t say where exactly this soul comes from, but it could be that all the materials except the strings are of this land. Another part could be the fretless nature, as it doesn’t push notes to being one or the other but lets them be fluid and in the middle.

There are lots of unexplored materials—just because they haven’t been used before doesn’t mean they can’t be.

Does a gut bucket count as a stringed instrument? My husband made one with a piece of paracord, as stick, and 5 gallon bucket.

Here's some instructions on how to make your own: https://www.cbgitty.com/news/5gallon-bucket-bass-a-simple-onestring-bass-builders-diary/

Gut bucket with just string, a bucket, and some sticks

My husband's is even more simple than that. I'll see if I can find it....

absolutely counts.

One of my parents friends when I was a kid used to play the wash bucket broom stick string thing (as I understood it when I was quite young).  She would play it around different music festivals.  

To make a cigar box ukulele (or guitar), it looks like I would need to find

- a box
- a stick
- something for a bridge
- something for a nut (top of stick where strings go)
- tuning somethings
- strings

Did I miss anything?

I made my cigar box guitar back in 2015. I asked a friend for the cigar box. The neck is a piece of oak that a cabinet maker gave to my Dad. We had a small stack of them when I was growing up and we always used them as swords. Anyways, it goes all the way through the body, being screwed to the top of the box. The bridge and nut came from a bolt that I cut in half. They were glued in place, but the glue has broken loose so now they float under the strings. I took the tuning machines from a 1/2 size kids guitar that was coming apart. I disassembled a Radio Shack piezo element for the pickup. But I don't plug it in very often.

There is a need for some way to attach strings at the lower end. There are multiple ways to do this:

1. Have some form of tailpiece where the strings attach, which is similar to banjos, mandolins and violin family. In this case you could make a very simple bridge:



2. A spike goes all the way along/through the instrument, narrowing at the tip, such that strings can be looped around—early banjos and citoles have this sort of string attachment, and so does my homemade gourd instrument. This seems like the easiest in my opinion.

On ekonting, this goes over the gourd and is secured in place by the skin—the bridge straddles this papyrus stick. In my instrument and in banjos, the spike is attached separately to the neck and passes under the skin/sound board.

Their bridges are also quite simple, and look very much like their namesake.

I do not know why this style of string attachment is not more used! It seems very secure as far as I have seen.

3. Have a bridge that is firmly attached, like guitar and ukulele, and the strings are tied or pegged to that. This will be the most familiar to you.

4. Some invention I don’t know about, whether you make it up yourself or I just don’t know about it!

Cigars have never been a big thing in this city and cigar boxes aren't as available as I would hope.  I had hoped for free, but no.  And I kind of hope that this can be a "for free" and "easily salvageable stuff from our second quarter twenty-first century world" kind of project.  

What would be the modern day equivalent of a cigar box for making a guitar (or, in my case, a ukulele).

What qualities am I looking for?  Would a cookie tin from christmas be enough or am I looking for something more than a hollow space?  

I just made this—the process took less than an hour.

It does work.

Amazing!

Hopefully you can listen to this… m4a files? It might work better as a fiddle but I’ve yet to make a bow by which to bow it.
All I have is my phone and phones can be limiting…

An inspiring sound.

So now I have to make one.

Is it my lack of music knowledge or is there a delightful Chinese sound in there,  Chinese bluegrass?  Is that a thing?

Oh my gosh, talk about the portsmouth sinfonia! Please excuse my awful playing. Yes, I did have a bow, a very short one though.

May also be too much rosin?

Or too much tension. One or the other.

r ransom wrote:An inspiring sound.

So now I have to make one.

Is it my lack of music knowledge or is there a delightful Chinese sound in there,  Chinese bluegrass?  Is that a thing?

I’m not quite sure where it comes from—maybe it’s easier to play pentatonic scales when not quite confident with an instrument? But then again I gravitate towards them anyway. Chinese music does use a lot of pentatonic scales, but maybe it’s something about the rhythm. I don’t know very much about Chinese music but maybe I would find it familiar.

I am in awe.  To make an instrument, then know right away how to play it.  This is a skill beyond my understanding of the world.

And you can play it with a bow or with plucking!  

My brain is over analyzing everything about building an instrument.  Do I need to care about distance from bridge to nut?  Do materials matter? Where is the library book to tell me what to do and how to play? How many strings do I want?

And yet the thing that attracts me to this kind of instrument, is that none of that matters.  It is truly a people's instrument that any build skills could make one and one that sounds good.  It gives the freedom to experiment. (Although, I suspect it helps to have some music skill to quicken the speed we learn to play the instrument)

https://www.cigarboxguitar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/AdvancedCigarBoxGuitarConstruction.pdf

For the over-thinker would be cigar box guitarist.

Because I'm lazy and don't want to have to learn a new instrument, I'm thinking of an acoustic version of something like these







Cookie tins are usually a dollar in the thrift store, and if by some sad chance they are sold out, I could pretend I don't have a huge stash of tins and eat cookies.

I am in awe.  To make an instrument, then know right away how to play it.  This is a skill beyond my understanding of the world.

It is essentially muscle memory for the scales, and what sorts of distances make what sorts of sounds—figure out what note you want and move up or down until it sounds right. It is fretless too.

Do I need to care about distance from bridge to nut?  

This makes no difference for a fretless instrument. This one doesn’t even have a nut, just a tuning peg!

Do materials matter?

Maybe? I didn’t think plastic would sound very good but then I jumped in and tried and it was fun, at least. It still sounds like plastic, not wood. But it makes musical sounds.

Where is the library book to tell me what to do and how to play? How many strings do I want?

This only has one string. You could start with one and add more too! I’m thinking of adding a second drone string today.

There is also this page on musical instruments: https://mudcat.org/kids/bongos.cfm It might be close-ish to a library book for this sort of thing.

Another recording. Two strings! And doesn’t sound as much like a wheezing calf! (If that is even what a wheezing calf sounds like? Not a sound I have heard before)

Do materials matter?

I am inspired.  I think I found a good stick and a cookie tin not being used for anything right now.

Next is to figure out how to safely cut or drill holes in the side of the cookie tin.

The stick is round so that might make things easier,  or harder.   I think it will hold one or two strings.  

I might cheat and use the tuning pegs from my ukulele repair as they were about 4 for a dollar.  My hands aren't steady enough to whittle this week.

But spring is taking priority, so this will have to be a rainy day project.

Found this today—a fiddler made his fiddle from an orange box and preferred it to ordinary fiddles, turning down an offer of five pounds to sell. (Five pounds in yesteryear’s money of course.)

A different way to play a 3 string cigar box guitar without a slide, but still getting cool slidy sounds

I love the fretless sound.

One way to make it less muted is to press down with the fingernails, not the fingertips, but this may not work so well with steel and wound strings (could abrade or break fingernails or cause a scratchy sound). Apparently, this is common for instruments like sanxian that are ordinarily fretless.

I saw one with a glass bottle, a bit of pipe in it, and what looked like blue tack holding a giant elastic band for the string.  Sounded cool.

I don't know if this counds as cigar box variation we can play a melody on, but wow!  What a crazy (nice kind of crazy) sound.

Cardboard functional banjo

Focus on cooked wheat paste glue and sustainably as much as possible

I love the thought of making your own instruments out of what you have lying around!

I am not personally familiar with cigar boxes, but one thing I remember hearing about growing up was making a guitar out of a tissue box or a shoe box and some rubber bands or strings. I don't think I tried this myself, but this can be a fun project to do with kids.

Here is a useful video I found after a quick search that actually explains the different kinds of common stringed instruments and then shows you how to make a guitar out of a shoebox. I'm sure there are a lot of tutorials out there for this type of thing. Fun stuff!