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“I’ve got something you’re going to want to see,” Merlin Miller said, as he entered my booth at the 2015 Huntsville Cigar Box Guitar Festival carrying a cardboard box.Merlin has been building cigar box guitars and other homemade instruments for years. In addition to having a really cool first name (and he does have a bit of a wizardly look about him), he is also the father of Jon Miller, who is currently working on a “Strung Together” documentary on cigar box guitars and the people who build the …

This past January I was out in Los Angeles for the winter NAMM show. NAMM is the National Association of Music Merchants, and it is the biggest music-industry trade show in the United States. I wrote an earlier post about one of the few innovative things I found there (check it out here), but this article isn't about the NAMM show and the room after room of shiny, factory-made instruments there.This tale takes us to the other side of the city, to a dingy little recording studio in North Hollywoo …

If you have ever wondered about whether you might be able to sell your cigar box guitars, this is a story you should read.Todd Neal has been building cigar box guitars since he bought his first kit from C. B. Gitty 3 years ago. From there he has expanded his passion into a bona fide side business, selling his creations at festivals and shipping them all over the world. His first exposure to CBGs was when he saw a man selling them at a festival.“They were plain and the necks were square, but …

Seven years ago, I had never heard of cigar box guitars or other homemade instruments.I had dabbled a little with "restoring" an old Kay guitar and had read a book on how to build a bluegrass mandolin. But the idea of crafting musical instruments out of everyday objects had never occurred to me.That all changed in the summer of 2008 when my friend Dan "Deke" Caldwell and his wife Laurel (who now works in the C. B. Gitty packing department) took a vacation to Tennessee. While in Gatlinburg, they …

Out at the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, CA several weeks ago, I spent the first couple of days wandering around in a sort of days. There is just so much going on there: tons of people, some of them rock stars; 5 huge halls plus several of other levels of big rooms stuffed with instruments, equipment and displays; everywhere, the sounds of instruments being either professionally demoed or tried out by potential buyers. It is a massive, teeming spectacle, the beating heart of the modern musical …