Ceebeegeebee

I am a cybernetic swiftlet that fell from the pram.

Despite having an automated dream abode where dense, Damoclean coffee flows through the walls to specially installed faucets, where I can send lolcats from 1998 to my mother like chrononaut ghosts through sheer walls, I still think that house made from my own sputum are a funky idea.

I have a very nice guitar. A Takamine G460SC, a Japanese product that defies every Nipponese stereotype I can throw at it apart from that it was relatively cheap and extremely reliable. It has a built-in tuner, and I fitted new locking tuning pegs to it a year ago. It has got wet and barely de-tuned, sat at freezing train stations, knocked its way through sundry car boots, and generally done a bloody good job of being a musical instrument.

But I decided to build a guitar of my own. And I love it more than the reliable, safe old wife at home.

What an utterly atrocious state of a thing. Cigar box guitars, or CBGs, have graced the wrists and laps of hard-up minstrels since the late 19th century, and perhaps in reaction to the reliability, inexpense and quality of something that was not made by me, I felt an urge to spend my time making something ugly that I loved.

The body, a King Edward’s cigar box, was from eBay, and the neck standard hardwood planks from a timber yard. The only pre-bought components were those that require laser cutting or lathes, namely the frets and the tuning pegs. The bridge is comprised of two matchsticks superglued together that are slowly rusting and fall off if I play too hard.

As you can see, I made a complete pig’s ear of the headstock, so that it now resembles an anecdote about a bicycle with all its parts replaced. I have to retune it after every song, and it buzzes like spindly, sanded chitin. The body is so small and made of strengthened cardboard and so it will never have the resonance of Mrs. Takamine, and masking tape and screws hold in tortured tension. I have a horrible feeling that in snapping it will create a small black hole and eat my head. 

And yet I love it. Having sat inhaling its dust, cutting myself on its frets, and generally learning as I went, I have bonded with this construction even more so than my old touring partner. It has a distinct, reedy sound, almost like a koto or a shamisen, and certainly has its use. I plan to make many more, and I now know not to drill directly onto my mattress, or use my finger as a brace for the nails driven through it.

I would highly recommend you build one yourself. This one cost around £25 in parts, and took about two days, but I was watching Scrubs while doing so.

In the next most recent post I will include a clip of the CBG in action. Please excuse the musicianship.

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