The "Beale Street Busker" Amp-In Electric Guitar Kit - No Soldering!

Here's your chance to build a busker's dream - a cigar box guitar with a screaming built-in amplifier.

• Fully electric cigar box guitar - can be plugged into any guitar amp
• Internal 2.5 watt amp with separate volume and gain.  Powered by a single 9 volt battery.
• Twin internal speakers for extra volume.
• The possibility of infinite sustain on resonating notes... the guitar feels alive!

Picture it: a blues man stands on the corner of Beale Street on a sultry summer night in Memphis. Sunglasses shade his eyes from the bright neon lights streaming from the bars around him, and from his shoulders hangs a low-slung funky-looking rectangular guitar, somewhere between Bo Diddley and a cigar box. He flicks a switch on the guitar and cranks a knob, then his right hand stabs across the strings. A growling chord dripping with greasy blues goodness screams out, louder, meaner and grittier than a stray cat on the prowl. It is soon followed by another, and then another, as he grooves into a deep blues shuffle - the amplifier built into his busking guitar belting that American music out into the Memphis night.

This kit combines two of DIY cigar box guitar builders’ favorite things: a fully electric box guitar and a built-in battery-powered amp. Designed with buskers in mind, this kit lets you dial in the amount of volume and gain you want, from easy strumming to extreme sustain, heavy metal self-exciting scream! We named this kit the Beale Street Busker in honor of the famous thoroughfare in Memphis, Tennessee, which has been part of American musical history for a century and more.

This kit is designed with a 23" scale length and is based on our highly popular “Tupelo Tenor” design and first released in 2018.Tenor guitars have always been the smaller siblings of conventional six-string guitars, with a shorter scale and smaller body. Traditionally tenor guitars have four strings, but with the rise in popularity of the cigar box guitar and its iconic 3-string “GDG” tuning, we offer this popular kit in both 3- and 4-string versions.