Play Guitar Today with a Three String Cigar Box Guitar

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 Are new to cigar box guitars I should explain what they are. 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 guitar body to amplify the sound from the strings.

Back in the 19th century cigar smoking was far more popular than it is today. 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 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 might have only one string, but they are commonly made with three strings and no frets. A bottleneck slide, knife or even a piece of animal bone can be used to fret the steel strings.

Cigar box based musical instruments are a traditional form of folk instrument that could easily be made using items that would otherwise have been thrown away. There has been something of an explosion in interest in these simple home made instruments, partly fuelled by the internet. And home made guitar like instruments don’t have to be based on a cigar box. 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.

[Guitar] Cha Sun Chong et al. – “Our Kindergarten Teacher” {DPRK Music}

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