Short Scale Cigar Box Guitar

As far back as the Civil War ('The War of Northern Aggression' for my fellow Southerners), the simple cigar box has had a role in the creation of music. In it's earliest recorded use (from an etching by French artist Edwin Forbes), it was converted into a cigar box fiddle by some Confederate soldiers. Late in the 19th century, plans for the 'Uncle Enos Banjo' were published in the "American Boy's Handy Book" by Daniel C. Beard as a step-by-step guide to creating a cigar box banjo. Around the turn of the century and into the first few decades of the 20th century, the cigar box guitar and cigar box fiddle were used in the growth of jug band music and the blues. During the Great Depression, the cigar box saw another resurgence in popularity in the US. Since many could not afford 'real' instruments, they would cobble together a cigar box, a broom handle, and some screen wire and then be able to sit on their porch and sing the blues. After the Great Depression was over, the humble cigar box slipped back into the shadows until around the age of the new millenium. It was then, during what some call the 'Cigar Box Revolution', that the cigar box guitar started to re-emerge.

It's an instrument nearly anyone can create and the required equipment to truly get the Delta Blues 'sound'. The technology has advanced since it's early years. Most cigar box guitars are now electric. Though many DIY luthiers use the simple piezo element as a pickup, some have used everything from single coil pickups and humbuckers from more modern guitars to hand winding their own pickups from scratch. The hand wound pickups range from using enamel coated copper wire, a couple of bolts, a bar magnet, and some cardboard to creating pickups that would practically rival those made by Gibson, Seymour Duncan, Fender, and DiMarzio. The necks vary from simple planks of wood to recycled necks from broken guitars to hand-crafted professional quality guitar necks made from exotic wood. The bridges range from steel bolts to electric and acoustic guitar bridges to custom fabricated ones. Strings range from a single string 'Diddley Bow' to six strings like that on a modern guitar. The same range can be seen on types of strings used, parts used for tuning pegs, frets or lack thereof, material used for the guitar nut, and length of the guitar's scale. Each cigar box guitar builder has added their own elements to their creations.

"So I went ahead and made me a guitar. I got me a cigar box, I cut me a round hole in the middle of it, take me a little piece of plank, nailed it onto that cigar box, and I got me some screen wire and I made me a bridge back there and raised it up high enough that it would sound inside that little box, and got me a tune out of it. I kept my tune and I played from then on." - Lightnin' Hopkins

So I decided to try my hand at creating a cigar box guitar myself. I originally intended to make everything but the box and tuning pegs from scratch, but on one of my trips to the junk store, I managed to find a Spiderman 3 child-size electric guitar pretty cheap. It was one of those guitars with a small built in amplifier and speaker to allow children to practice without an amp. The scale was only 20 inches long, but since this would be my first cigar box guitar, I could make it work. After I got it back to my studio, I popped a 9 volt battery into it and tested it out to make sure it hadn't been destroyed by some overzealous child. It was badly out of tune, but otherwise, everything was fine. I would be able to salvage the neck, tuners, bridge, single coil pickup, and strap buttons off of it for my purposes. I thought about reusing the built-in amp, but set it aside to possibly build into a little cigar box or Altoids tin amp.

With the guitar stripped down, I went to a local cigar shop in search of the proper cigar box to use for the body. I managed to pick up a small Punch Magnum English Market Selection box for a couple of dollars that would match the color of the neck from the Spiderman guitar perfectly.

Because I wouldn't be using the original built in amplifier from the child's guitar (that had the volume potentiometer and jack wired to it) and wanted to wire in a volume and a tone knob for the pickup, I dug through my parts bin and pulled out a couple of 250k potentiometers, a 1/4" mono jack, a 0.022 uF capacitor, and a couple of spare white Fender Stratocaster knobs.

With all the parts I would need in hand, it was time to build the guitar. The Punch box was just long enough to allow me to mount the bridge at the very end of the top of the box and still maintain the original 20" scale. Since the cigar box wasn't originally built to take the strain of guitar strings, I attached a small block of 1x2 oak to the underside of the lid to give the screws for the bridge something extra to grip into. The screw from the strap button would provide extra support by going into the oak block from the back of the guitar.

The Punch box was thin, but not thin enough to be able to mount the neck without a little assistance. So I cut a couple more lengths of 1x2 oak, glued them side by side to make a pseudo-1x4, and shaped them to fit into the hole I cut into the Punch box for the neck. With a little extra sanding and a couple coats of semi-gloss black spray, the oak could now be glued into the box to provide extra support for the neck while still flowing with the lines of the box and neck. After test fitting the neck and a little more sanding, it was starting to look like a guitar.

Before I haphazardly cut the hole for the pickup, I found a Pickup Response Demonstration Applet designed by J. Donald Tillman that allows you to input the guitar scale length, number of frets, frequency of the string, and number of pickups and move the pickups back and forth between the bridge and neck to get the best frequency response from the guitar. As luck would have it, the best response came from when the pickup was mounted in the exact center of the Punch box which was also the best aesthetic location for it. Since the Spiderman guitar had the screws for the pickup screwed straight into the body of the guitar, I had to add another piece of 1x2 oak inside the box to give something other than the back of the guitar to screw them into. To avoid pushing the bar magnet against the oak, I carved out a channel down the middle of the oak for it to sit comfortably.

With the pickup test mounted and the neck and bridge in place it was time to figure out where to mount the output jack and the knobs to be accessible but out of the way of the playing area. The best place I could find for the output jack was on the end of the guitar in the space between the bridge and the bottom of the box. After drilling a 5/16" hole in the box, I was able to mount the jack.

The knobs proved to be a bit more difficult to mount. Because the Punch box was so small, every location on the front of the guitar that I tried put at least one knob in the way of the playing the guitar. Because of this, the only location I could find that wasn't in the way, but still easy to get to was on the side of the box up by the neck. This would put them in a tough spot for any left-handed players, but since I'm right-handed, it works out. So I drilled a few 3/8" holes and mounted the potentiometers and knobs.

With all the components figured out, now came the fun part. Wiring it all up. I found a wiring diagram for properly hooking up a single coil pickup with one volume knob and one tone knob on Seymour Duncan's website. I have to say that Seymour Duncan's support pages are great reference if you are just getting into working with guitar electronics. Unlike the wiring diagram, I was using a 250k pot for the volume instead of a 500k one and a 0.022 uF capacitor instead of a 0.047 uF capacitor since it was what I had on hand. After working on this project, I can honestly say that soldering is not fully within my skill set just yet, so the task of hooking everything up was definitely frustrating. To make matters worse, finding outlets to plug things in at my studio can be a challenge at times. The only outlet that I could plug the Hakko 936 Soldering Station that I bought last year into that was near my work table happened to be the same one that my AC was using. To use the soldering station, I would have to unplug the air conditioner. Let me tell you, doing something you're not entirely talented at yet in a room with poor circulation and no AC in the middle of June in Ohio is grueling. So Thirty minutes later, about a pint of sweat, and a few choice words after burning myself with a hot soldering iron, it was together and time for final assembly. After attaching the neck, the back strap button, the pickup and stringing it up, I plugged it into my little Crate Bass Amp to check out what this little bad boy sounded like. Only there was one problem... no sound. I would have to take the strings, neck, back strap button, and pickup screws off and look over the electronics to see what I messed up.

It turned out that when I soldered the ground wire and capacitor to the back of the tone knob, I hadn't gotten a good solder joint and they had broken away from the back of the potentiometer. So once again, no AC and a few more choice words trying to get the components to solder correctly and it looked like the problem was fixed. I double checked the rest of the solder joints and they all looked good (well maybe not good, but functional). To avoid potentially having to disassemble the guitar again, I went ahead and plugged it into the amp to make sure that the electronics were functioning properly before re-assembling it. This time there was sound. Once I put the guitar back together, I plugged it into my little Korg Chromatic Tuner and tuned it to the most commonly used blues tuning, Open G (D G D G B D), before I hooked it into my amp and strummed the strings. A nice G chord came through the amp. I had successfully created my first musical instrument.


It still has a few bugs that I might need to iron out. Somewhere along the line, I misplaced three of the little plastic bushings that go on the tuning pegs. So I either need to try and find them, remove the three that are still on the guitar, or replace all six of them with metal ones to balance it out. Also, there's a slight buzz that happens when you're not touching the strings or the bridge. I'm pretty sure it's a grounding issue that could be fixed by lining the inside of the guitar with aluminum or copper foil to cancel it out. Other than that, it looks like a successful build.

Now if only I knew how to play guitar... but that's another project all together.

Short Scale Cigar Box Guitar