September 04, 2007

Cigar Box Electric: Sort of

This is a simple cigar box style electric guitar I made last year using the wooden box that comes with the Electro Harmonix Micro Synthesizer as the body. The neck and bridge were just lying around my workshop in Ireland and I had nothing to do that day so after several hours of work I ended up with this weird instrument.

The scale length is shorter than the fret spacing on the neck would like but it still sounds great when played with a slide or prepared or modified with a third bridge. The hollow body gives the guitar a rather unique resonating quality that produces really interesting tones. Below is a sample of some noises I created using this guitar and our latest electronic synth / effect unit, Fotosis No. 004 there is a picture of the equipment setup at the end of the post.



The pickups are good quality single coils that were replacements I bought for my first guitar. It was not being used anymore due to the fact that it had become so modified and broken normal music was impossible to play on it, but it looked and sounded totally cool. I removed the pickups from the old guitar and cut slots into the EH Micro Synth box through which I pushed the pickups and then secured them in place wit four screws.


This instrument was a gift for Connie as was the little Danelectro Honeytone pocket amplifier that we use all the time now as a preamp.



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