Red Barn Guitar Kit - Choose Your Model

Custom-printed guitar kits inspired by old American barns painted with chewing tobacco billboards.  This is our first kit series designed by Shane Speal!  Easy to assemble and ready to be stained (neck), painted, woodburned, decorated and customized.

No fretting installation needed.  Each kit comes with a fully fretted neck.    

Available in three models:  

• The Electric "Tupelo" - loaded with a classic Lipstick Tube pickup, fully pre-wired. (No soldering needed!)
• The Resophonic "Howler" - featuring a C. B. Gitty Hubcap resonator cone for old timey Dobro tone and classic F holes.
• Fully Acoustic "Mountain" versions - loud, Depression Era tone from our birch ply body construction and beautiful Appalachian Leaf soundholes.

Choose from three or four string configurations.

Designed and with most of the parts made right here at the C. B. Gitty workshops in Gonic, New Hampshire, these amazing-sounding guitars can be built at your dining room table with just a few basic tools. No advanced woodworking is required (no sawing, routing, etc) - just some basic clamping, gluing, light drilling and screw insertion is all it takes to build your very own handmade instrument.

This  kit comes with a set of strings meant for tuning to Open G "GDGB" or 3-string GDG, which have become the de facto tuning standards for 4-string and 3-string cigar box guitars. This kit also comes with a full fretboard already attached to the neck, making assembly easy. The detailed how-to guide not only shows you how to assemble the kit, but also includes some basic how-to-play information as well, to help get you picking once the build is done.

Shown:  The parts for the Howler model, including the Hubcap resonator cone and a fully fretted neck.

We also throw in a full-color copy of one of Ben Gitty's Essential Chords Posters (3-string or 4-string version, depending on which kit you order) with every kit, which is a wealth of information to help get you strumming along with popular songs. 

Also don't forget to grab a copy of one of Ben's songbooks! He has a whole line-up of 3-string tablature songbooks, and also the Four-String Songbook by Ben Gitty, featuring 30 beloved songs arranged for four-string GDGB guitars - which is what you build with this kit!

Assembly time on this kit is 3-4 hours, not including glue set-up time. It is recommended for ages 16 and up, though younger kids can help build it with close adult supervision. 

Here is a testimonial for this kit from customer Ron H: "Got my Tupelo Tenor kit Thursday. I am very happy with it. It sounds great. Took your advice and am approaching it like a while new instrument. I've been playing in a form of open G (DGBD) but this is better. Especially the chord forms. I am very happy with the four string songbook. Your material is great. Thanks to you I now am understanding how to move from single string melody playing to choral melody playing. I've needed this info for a long time. THANK YOU."