Cigar Box Guitar

This sweet-sounding, three-stringed mini guitar revives an American musical tradition. As a volunteer music teacher, Ed Vogel sometimes meets kids who can't afford instruments. So he decided to design one that they could inexpensively build themselves, based on the traditional cigar box guitar. Before the 1950s, when factory guitars became less expensive, many folk musicians built their own stringed instruments. Wooden cigar boxes, which were solidly constructed connoisseur objects, became a pop