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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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

At C. B. Gitty, we've always been excited about the idea of kids building cigar box guitars, and what they can learn from it, so we jump at the chance to work with teachers and schools who are insterested in making this happen. A couple of months back we were contacted by Tom Knight, a teacher at the East Woods School in Oyster Bay, NY (on Long sland) about a special class he wanted to do with some of his students. The East Woods School is a "small by design" private school t …