Steve Lodefink's first cigar box guitar

Steve Lodefink just shared with me the photos of his first cigar box guitar. What a beaut! Here's the headstock, here's the body.

• [zeroy]

  I’d say it’s a tenor guitar. 4 strings tuned like the first 4 strings of a guitar.

• [TroofSeeker]

  Thanks Mark / nice work, Steve!
  I ain’t been around much for a couple weeks- stroking some long hours. But these homemade instruments fuel a yearning in me to post a video of myself playing my wife’s dulcimer.
  The problem is, I don’t feel properly dressed yet. Sure, I’ve got Gandhi’s loincloth and Lincoln’s tophat on, and black HeavensGate Nike’s,
  but I feel naked until I get Charles Nelson Reilly’s glasses, Rodney Dangerfield’s red tie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Meersham pipe.
  On that happy day, my friends, I’ll play some Steven Foster for ya.

• [aplombtom]

  There’s this great shop in Memphis called Xanadu where the owner makes crazy electric cigar box guitars. Usually they include one bass string and two or three guitar strings, and a lot of them are made from an assortment of found objects. They sound just as dirty as they look. There’s not really a website for the shop, but if you do an image search for “lowebow,” which is what he calls these monstrosities, you can find plenty of them.
  Here’s one:
  http://home.hiwaay.net/%7Ejehle/jpg/lowebow.jpg

• [zeroy]

  Oh really, @7. Like you have some authority about what constitutes a legitimate instrument.

  “Bad due to poor resonance” is a pre-judgement based on what you think it SHOULD sound like. Yeah, compared to a guitar, it probably sounds like shit. But, compared to other instruments just like it, a category that consists of one member, it is the stradivarius of cigar box tenor guitars built by this man.

  I like to buy crappy, thrift store, horrible guitars. Saw the neck off. And mount steel bars onto the bridge like a kalimba. or what the Africans prefer to call a mbira. Nail bottle caps loosely all over the shell so that they buzz and rattle in sympathy. This is an acquired aesthetic that you might do well to try to understand.

• [Takuan]

  pix or it didn’t happen

• [shanespeal]

  Big ol’ honkin list of cigar box guitar resources:

  http://www.cigarboxnation.com – the #1 site for all things cigar box guitars. Free plans, free help and a really close community. Mark Frauenfelder is a member…

  http://www.insurrectionrecords.com – The all-cigar box guitar record label. Features the “Masters of the Cigar Box Guitar” cd set.

  http://www.songsinsidethebox.com – the just-released PBS documentary on the Cigar Box Guitar Revolution.

  http://www.cigarboxguitar.com – my site. Free mp3′s and more.

  Lowebows (in Memphis as mentioned above): http://www.geocities.com/lowebow

  http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/cigarboxguitars – the old Cigar Box Guitar Forum. Archives available for all to see. This forum isn’t used much, but it does have 6 years worth of tips, ideas and pictures galore.

  well, there ya go. Have at it…
  -Shane Speal

• [Mark Frauenfelder]

  @7 — cigar box guitars can sound great. Here’s one example:

  http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/sleepwalk-on-3-string-cigar

  Lot’s more here:

  http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video

• [ZombyWoof]

  I don’t get it. Ukes I can live with, they’re a legitimate instrument, but these things simply sound bad due to the poor resonance. It looks very well done for what it is, but if you want to scratch a Make/DIY itch I would do some other project and just buy an inexpensive used guitar to play.

  @Troofseeker – I would like to see a video of you playing your wife’s dulcimer, but I think that’s prohibited here. :)

• [TroofSeeker]

  @ZombyWoof: “@Troofseeker – I would like to see a video of you playing your wife’s dulcimer, but I think that’s prohibited here. :)”

  Zomby Woof,
  I doubt that Mark would deny me.
  We first met in the Yukon. He was pinned beneath a fallen tree. Beavers had gnawed his toenails off, termites had built an empire in his tattered skivvies, and crows had plucked his beard for their nests. He was foaming at the mouth with dilirium, starving and fevered.
  Dude, I gave him half my sandwich and a Twinkie. He owes me.

• [Anonymous]

  Troofie, you took his .50 Hawken, surely that was repayment enough.

• [scifiguy]

  That cigar box guitar is so neat! Want one!

• [TroofSeeker]

  I left him with a tarp because it looked like it might rain. The few nuggets he had hardly paid for my flight home.

• [nosehat]

  It’s very nice.

  But with it’s 4 strings, I suspect you’re sneaking in another ukulele post, under the radar as it were. ;)