Welcome to C. B. Gitty Crafter Supply!
Welcome to C. B. Gitty Crafter Supply, your resource for affordable guitar frets/guitar fret wire, bass frets/bass fret wire, stainless steel fret wire, gold fret wire, fretting guides/fretting books, guitar tuners, decorative hardware, guitar electronics and more – an ever-expanding range of products geared towards stringed instrument building and repair. Our range of fret wire styles and sizes is good for guitars of all sizes and types, banjos, mandolins, dulcimers, cigar box guitars, and other more exotic stringed instruments too!
We strive to offer high-quality products at very competitive prices while at the same time providing exceptional customer service. We have served hundreds of very satisfied customers over the past year, and we hope to do the same for you.
Please visit our storefront to view all of our products. We are adding new items all the time, so check back often!
More CBGs on the TV: Slackjack Guitars
It’s always cool to see CBGs make it into the “mainstream”, and it seems to be happening more and more these days. This short documentary piece features Travis Woodall and SlackJack Guitars.
Video Documentary of the 2011 Pennsylvania Cigar Box Guitar Festival
Check out this great video documentary created by Randy Flaum of the York Dispatch Newspaper in York, PA. The good people who braved the threat of Hurricane Irene to come out that day definitely were rewarded with an experience to remember. I am glad to have been a part of CBG history, and this documentary really captures the essence of it. Enjoy! – Ben/C. B. Gitty
Deciding Whether to Fret Your Cigar Box Guitar
The questions come up often among Cigar Box Guitar builders: Is fretting worth it? Why would I want to fret my build? What do I need to know and what tools do I need to get started? Fretting can be a complex topic, but it doesn’t need to be a murky mystery to builders. This article will attempt to cover some of the basic concepts to help you decide whether you are ready to take the plunge, as well as point you to other resources to help you get started.
One of the best resources you can find to help you get started fretting is our C. B. Gitty’s Fretting Guide, a 39-page electronic book packed with photos and great do-it-yourself how-to information Read the rest of this entry »
CBG Bling: Decorating your Cigar Box Guitar
A Cigar Box Guitar (CBG) can range widely when it comes to decoration. The most basic, primitive CBGs have very little decoration; reduced to its most basic form, a CBG is a stick, a box and a couple of strings, without any need for show adornment. While there is definitely nothing wrong with that austere simplicity, many builders enjoy adding some decorative touches to their builds. Many cigar boxes start off as pretty decorative pieces anyway, so it is natural to try to build upon that when creating a handmade instrument from one.
The purpose of this article is to discuss some of the methods you can use to decorate your builds, and wherever possible to use hardware that is both decorative AND useful – using a decorative Read the rest of this entry »
Building Cigar Box Mountain Dulcimers
If you are looking to expand your cigar box instrument-building repertoire beyond the basic 3 and 4-string cigar box guitars, then consider taking a look at a classic instrument of American folk and roots music: the mountain dulcimer. A unique strummed/plucked instrument that is distinct from the hammered dulcimer, the mountain dulcimer is well suited to building with cigar boxes. In this article, experienced cigar box mountain dulcimer (CBMD) builder Diane from Chicago shares photos and discusses some of her methods for creating these beautiful instruments.
Read the rest of this entry »
Using Piezos in Cigar Box Guitars: Part 2 – Placement & Mounting
This article is a continuation of the Piezo 101 Introduction to Piezo Basics. In this article we move from theory and general information to how-to info you can put to direct use in your builds. There are two main themes to this section: WHERE you should mount your piezo, and HOW you should mount it. Both of these are very important to consider when your goal is to get the best possible sound out of your cigar box guitar.
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Using Piezos in Cigar Box Guitars: Part 1 – Piezo Basics
A lot of new Cigar Box Guitar (CBG) builders (and more than a few veterans) tend to get a bit uneasy when the topic of piezo pickups comes up. Everyone seems to have a different idea of how to use them. Some folks say that they should be built into the bridge, others attach them to the exterior of the bridge; some mount them inside the box lid, others attach them to the outside of the lid. Add in concepts such as insulation methods, multiple piezos, volume potentiometers and wiring schematics, and the waters tend to get pretty muddy pretty fast.
This two-part article is meant to be a basic “here’s what you need to get started” approach to helping people install a piezo pickup into their Cigar Box Guitar build. We will cover the basics of what piezo to use, where you can put it, how to mount it, and how to wire it to a jack. We will also briefly discuss the topic of wiring in a otentiometer.
Cigar Box Guitar Piezo Wiring Diagrams
Putting electronic components into a cigar box guitar, and getting everything properly wired and connected, can be a daunting task for the first-timer – but it doesn’t have to be. In this article we will present several basic wiring diagrams created by Ted Crocker of HandmadeMusicClubhouse.com , and discuss each of them in some detail to help you understand what is going on.
Don’t forget that you can get most of the parts shown in this article, including piezos , jacks, volume potentiometers and potentiometer knobs , right in our C. B. Gitty Crafter Supply Web Store!
Read the rest of this entry »
Soldering Tutorial
This article by Naz Nomad covers some of the key basic methods for successful soldering, whether on your Cigar Box Guitar or other electronics project. Filled with photos and good advice that comes from years of experience, this short tutorial will have you successfully soldering in no time.
Topics covered include: the importance of tinning your iron and wires, what good solder joints look like, soldering to a tone/volume pot, soldering to a piezo, and wire aesthetics. If you have been uncertain about your soldering skills, this tutorial is a great place to start improving.
| For great deals on potentiometers, piezos, jacks, hook-up wire and other CBG parts, be sure to check out our C. B. Gitty Crafter Supply Web Store! |
How to Pick the Right Strings for your Cigar Box Guitar
One of the most frequent questions we hear from new cigar box guitar builders is what strings they should use on their cigar box guitar, and how they should tune it. This can be a very mysterious for a builder, especially folks without much of a musical background. While it is often said that there are no rules when it comes to building CBGS (and that is often true, which is one of the great things about this hobby), it can be very frustrating to hear when you just want a simple answer to a question. In this article, we’ll try to demystify some of the theory behind strings and tunings, and also give some straightforward clear answers for those who just want to know what to do.
First, we’ll give a clear answer for those of you who just want to know what to do: at C. B. Gitty Crafter Supply we consider a “standard” cigar box guitar to be a 3-stringer with medium-gauge acoustic strings tuned to either Open G (for slide playing), or G-B-E for fretted playing. The strings used are equivalent to the three highest-pitched strings on a standard six-string guitar, and the scale length of the instrument (the distance from the nut to the bridge) is around 25 inches.
This happens to be the most popular set of CBG strings we sell in our shop – our C. B. Gitty 3-String Acoustic Medium Open G/Standard Set. If you are building your first cigar box guitar and have no idea what to do or what you need, start with these strings. These strings are based on a “medium” weight set sold for a standard 6-string, but includes only the 3 highest-pitch strings (the smallest/lightest ones) from the pack, so you don’t have any leftovers. It can be tuned either in “Open G” tuning for slide playing (G-B-D), or if you have a fretted neck it can be tuned like the 3 highest-pitch strings of a standard guitar (G-B-E).
This “standard” tuning will allow you to utilize partial chords that you might know from a standard guitar. Read the rest of this entry »
