News
Is it getting harder to find Cigar Box Guitar-sized cigar boxes?
I buy a lot of cigar boxes from a number of wholesale sources, including a couple of the biggest online and mail-order cigar companies in the country. Just last week a shipment of 5 pallets of empty boxes arrived, about 1100 total boxes, and I just finished looking through all of the cartons to see what I got. I also smoke the occasional cigar, and go into cigar shops semi-frequently, both to get a cigar or two and see what empty boxes they have on hand.Based on all of that, I am seeing a t
…
8th Feb 2015
Shane Speal shows off his favorite Gitty parts on a new guitar
In this video, King of the Cigar Box Guitar Shane Speal shows off one of his recent cigar box guitar builds, featuring all of the great C. B. Gitty parts on it:
Shane Speal Signature 3-string TunersTeisco(tm) Del-Rey-style Gold Foil surface mount pickupChrome 3-string Hard-tail BridgeDecorative brass box cornersNickel-silver fretwire
…
4th Feb 2015
Meet Bob McNally, Inventer of the Strumstick and Backpacker Guitar
In the modern cigar box guitar and handmade musical instrument movement, we sometimes forget that there were some key innovations, and innovators, that in their own way helped lay the groundwork for the hobby we enjoy today.At the NAMM show in Anaheim, California in late January, I had the pleasure of getting to know a man who was one of those innovators - Bob McNally. Bob has been involved with creating musical instruments since the early 1980’s, and his inventions influence some of the things
…
31st Jan 2015
New Feature - Gitty's Recommended Items
There are a lot of products that we use in the C. B. Gitty workshops, that I have no desire to sell as stocked products. From wood finishes to sandpaper, drill presses to sanders, dust masks to glue, this is all good stuff that we've been using for years.The best way I have found to let people know about this is through a special Amazon "mini-store", which allows me to showcase specific items from the Amazon catalog. These days, Amazon has just about everything, and if you are a Prime member tha
…
4th Jan 2015
Keeping it Free
Recently, Glenn Watt and I have been very focused on creating 3-string cigar box guitar tablature and posting it in the knowledgebase over at www.CigarBoxGuitar.com. Folks have been asking whether the end result of all of this cigar box tablature creation will be a book of some sort that can be purchased. The short answer is: no, we're going to keep it free. Once there is enough we might compile it into a PDF collection (or collections), but even that will be free. There are sever
…
10th Nov 2014