I will show you how, all the steps completely broken down, from start to finish.

In this DVD you will learn EXACTLY how to construct a Red Dog Cigar Box Guitar...ALL OF THE SECRETS to making the neck and guitar a true tonal machine, what to do about the body, fret-boarding and fretting like a pro, headstocks of all types... BOTH 3 and 4 strings... all of the parts to make a great cigar box guitar and most important, you will learn a deep understanding of all the pickups and various ways of mounting them to get that deep Delta Blues sound you have always wanted....plus a super in depth breakdown of the bridges of many styles and how they change everything.


This is the most in depth and complete How to Build a Cigar Box Guitar DVD ever made and that can ever be made,  Go to you-tube and search "cigar box guitar" and check out many of the great and talented makers and have a listen, then do a comparison and search and see just why Red Dog Guitars has the tone everyone wants....however, this is not a contest, with this DVD you will have all of the secrets to incorporate in your own guitar making, no matter if its your first time, or you want to start a guitar making business or club, this will give you the ability to make really awesome guitars and take them to the next level.


This is not a basic or introductory DVD, but full on ultimate Cigar Box Guitar building,  the wood, boxes, deferent styles of necks and so much more is covered for building a great playing full of tone one of a kind guitar.

 

 

What does a cigar box guitar sound like?

You can make you guitar sound clean, heavy, vintage or modern, however you want with just the right instructions.

This DVD is made for standard Television players and is 96 minutes (1&1/2hours) of cigar box building, everything explained, the tools, the parts, the woods, neck heels, paint finishing, fretting, the pickups and so much more is explained, all the mysteries explained in one fun to watch DVD...within it there is a world of unknown tips, tricks and secrets used on Red Dog Guitars that you can use on your guitar to make the ultimate cigar box guitar.

 

 

 

 

 

and I am sorry but I have to keep repeating this because somewhere out there, someone will assume I am sending a guitar, I think it is because the music that I record and the guitars I build are so exciting and fun to watch, others want to participate and enjoy it themselves. It has happened before,..people bid, then email saying "I can't wait to get my guitar!!!" so...once again, No Guitar is included in this auction, this is a CD Album for sale in this auction!    

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Ok, so you want to know a bit more about Delta Blues and cigar box guitar history????      

    "...boy, you'd better start a' strum'n that box and play me a ditty, or I'm gonna' get off my horse..." "WILD BILL" HICKOCK 1869

Cigar Box Guitar 3 and 4 string guitars    

 

Well, what is a Cigar Box Guitar? The truth is, in the South It's common to hear stories that B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Lightin' Hopkins and all those other old-time blues cats started playing guitar on a cigar box guitar. Not many people who follow Blues and Country music know but, many famous Bluesmen and Country singers started their career on a simple homemade cigar box guitar. One reason most Blues and Country music has such a distinctive sound is because it was derived off of music made on these simple instruments.

To most Americans it's a little know fact that those "po' boys" of the years gone by played the Cigar Box Guitar. Well, now you know, this is how they did it...This ain't “Close, but no cigar”....This is following completely in their footsteps with Historical Civil War Era Roots. Cigar Box Guitars are great for a Killer Vintage National Oahu supro or valco sound without plugin' in effects or being reduced to buying an Asian made guitar. Most Acoustics, Resonators, Flattops, Lap Steels and Banjos can't even come close to the true primitive Southern Delta sound these guitars make. These instruments can be channeled into a creativity that many musicians desire for a more primal sound. Blues guitarists, in particular, really enjoy playing cigar box guitars in a search of playing Delta Blues in its purest form.

Countless numbers of these contraptions were created by musicians starting about 150 years ago in the Southern American Delta. In those Cotton fields and Plantations of yester-year is where it all started. At the end off the 1860's when money was scarce after the Civil War, there was a passion for music in America and it was overflowing. Sad as it is, but in our nation's history, before the Civil War, the Cigar Box guitar was quoted by a Louisiana Plantation owner as an instrument fit only for "the jig-dancing lower classes of the n*&%* community..."----Jim Crow had separated whites and blacks with both cultural and musical boundaries. But even as bad as it was back then, there were good people in our new nation, and after the War in about 1870 the majority of people were ready to put aside their prejudices and get on with their lives. The war was over, and as the Union had forgiven the South out of Brotherhood, and as white people embraced the cultures of the black, both Union and Confederate, along with Black and White people, everyone was trying to move on with lives together.

This early time in America was a difficult time for Black Americans. They made a whole culture of there pain, we know it as the "Blues". Music was a great and important aspect of early American life. However, when black Americans were given there first view of freedom it was the 1870's and America in ruins, little money was had as a disposable income to buy instruments. One thing for sure about American resilience is ingenuity was abound. After the War both Union and Confederate Soldiers along with now freed Slaves carried the knowledge and appreciation of this creative guitar home to almost every corner of America. Ex-slaves and Soldiers used left over wood boxes, tin cans, string, broom handles, baling and screen wire and whatever else was lying around the house, shed or barn to create their instruments.

It's now a forgotten part of our history, but when enslaved Africans were brought to this country before the 1800's, they came without possessions, but not without their culture. In their memories, their customs, and their ways of looking at their world, they carried their cultural arts with them enslaved to America. These arts would enrich the New World, as Africans and Europeans mixed together and began to build the American way of life. African music, rooted in a distinctive musical tradition, was one of the most important of these cultural arts. The majority of their music was based on simple stringed instruments such as their "banjar"{a gourd with a neck and strings from Africa} which is thought to be the precursor of the American stringed guitar the "Banjo". The best known written accord of this early guitar is probably that of Thomas Jefferson in 1781: "The instrument proper to them {i.e. the slaves} is the Banjar, which they brought hither from Africa." But because enslaved people didn't have access to their native instruments they quickly adapted and built their own. At the time the basis of this guitar was the cigar box.

The use of a stringed instrument was also a necessity because slaves had many gatherings that called for and involved music. The cigar box guitar was used as an integrated part of there "cakewalk" celebration before it left the plantation and became popularized by whites.{it was a common religious slaves event were one would put a cake in the middle of the floor and dance around it to music, the best dance (or imitation of there master) would win the cake; an expression that transpired into the American expression "easy as a Cakewalk" i.e.-to be easy or fun or "takes the cake" -to win} The use of this stringed guitar slowly after time made its way into the mainstream of our Southern culture. Being spread from plantation to plantation it eventually evolved into and led to the creation of "The American Banjo". This in turn at the same time in popularizing the use of the steel-string guitar in our culture. This was a fad that slowly spread eastward to the cities and streets of American big cities and clubs (referred to as "parlors" at that time) It helped create the basis of guitar and eventually musically transformed itself again and led to the rise and use of the "Parlor guitar".

During this time the cigar box guitar was influencing all types of folk music which was sweeping thru underground American culture. In the "Root's", however, at the same time as the guitars popularity slowly rose in America, without money or true freedom, a slave, sharecropper, or impoverished person living in the countryside couldn't simply go down to the store and buy a guitar. Thus recreating the cycle of need to make your own guitar. Making a "home-made" guitar was the only choice for the impoverished. This tradition continued for decades among the poor for most of the late 1800's up till and thru the 1930's Depression Era.

 

 

 

Boy's Life Magazine circa 1936