Steve Holladay's "Pocket Box Guitar"

If you're a member of the Friends of C. B. Gitty group on on Facebook, you've probably seen some of the amazing creations of Steve Holladay. From double-necked fiddle-banjo hybrids, to bass banjos, Tennessee Music Boxes, fiddles galore and much more, Steve's been out there doing the Lord's work building homemade instruments for a long time... and it's safe to say he's pretty darn good at it.

Recently he posted this video of him playing his "Pocket Box Guitar" - a tiny little travel gitty with a 12-inch scale length, fishing line string and tuners carved from golf tees. Watch the vid then check out Steve's notes on the build below.

Steve says: "The little box is from my local Dollar Tree. They have them for $1.25 each. Neck is cherry. In the videos I posted it is tuned to C G C D. I sort of claw hammer it and the chords and most of the notes are in the same places as double C banjo tuning.

Running across the tiny box inspired it partially, and partially because I have to travel a lot for work. I have a tiny toy uke that is about 100 years old that I carry on planes sometimes in my computer backpack. It's about the same scale and is fun to play and not loud enough to draw hotel complaints... [but] I'd rather carry my own build. This was sort of an experiment to see if it's playable at that scale with the string spacing. The next one may have 5 strings with the short drone. I went back to the dollar store and bought 5 more boxes. ? Only took a couple of hours to build."

We look forward to seeing what else Steve's able to create using those tiny dollar-store boxes!

Check out Steve's blog here for more of his homemade instrument creations.