The cigar box guitars made by Gipson Shoemaker III are similar to homemade instruments that date back to the 19th century, made by musicians who couldn’t afford a real guitar.

“There’s really nothing like taking some raw materials, like a cigar box and some wood, and after some sawdust, glue and some fretting, coming up with an instrument you can play — that makes ...

Three and four strings are common, but there is also a single-string instrument, known as a diddley bow. With cigar box guitars having fewer strings luthiers often struggle to find pickups, the ...

The cigar box guitar sprung from the one-string diddley bow — said to be the origin of cigar box guitar master Bo Diddley’s name. Art or instrument, they all play tunes.

Cigar-box luthiers don’t frown on lifting ideas, an attitude that reflects both the instrument’s folksy roots—people who build their own instruments usually learned how from somebody—and ...

“A lot of the cigar-box instruments, they don’t sound like much necessarily acoustic. Most people who play them plug them in, it’s very electric.

The New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival (NOCBGF), which launched in 2016, celebrates the unpolished, meaty sound of the cigar box instrument — and its ingenuity. Take a cigar box (or really ...

WITH THESE UNIQUE INSTRUMENTS. AND OF COURSE, IT’S MADE MASS. THE SOUND THAT COMES OUT OF THAT IS UNBELIEVABLE. IT’S CRAZY. FOR THE UNINITIATED, THE SOUND COMING FROM THIS CIGAR BOX IS MIND ...

Jehle discovered that discarded cigar boxes were used to create ukuleles, mandolins, fiddles, violins and other various instruments. Around 1840, in fact, the cigar box as we know it today was ...

Some cigar box instruments, like Lowe’s, remain consciously low-tech, using just one, two or three strings; others, often employing four or sometimes even eight strings, apply sophisticated ...

Mark Dorner, a cigar box guitar player, said the three-stringed instruments serve as an ideal introduction to music. "It is a good introduction to music.