Every journey of a thousand miles begins and ends with one step, just as there is a first and a last breath.
I set about to make fifty instrumental artworks in the style of an electric cigarbox guitar and this piece is the fiftieth one.
Every journey is a teacher and this journey has taught me well.
With this guitar I was to come full circle, so I decided to include in it some of the great objects contained in some of its forty-nine predecessors.
The Rough Rider cigar boxes are one of my favourites. Each box had a size, history and strength in them that I wanted to convey in the last piece I was doing for this collection.
The Sink Hole sound hole is such a cheeky, funny, yet perfect accompaniment to cigar box guitar ethos, and this one was upcycled straight out of my old bathroom sink that was no longer in use.
In my guitar making searches there were a lot of people whom had long since swapped out the pickup’s of the Epiphone Les Paul guitars and put in something more up to date involving the huge advancements made in “puppy” power and quality since the sixties.
Coincidentally, there was also some amazing sounding pickups made from Epiphone in that era, that were perfect for replicating that old school blues sound, and when you pop them in a cigar box and have a listen, you can be transported by the sound waves back through history in one strum.
I decided after doing 49 different headstock designs that number fifty would be no different, but I wanted it to involve another side to space.
I remember reading many times how it was the nothing in between the frame that created the window, and to “Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand and you will have use of the room.”
In the ancient texts, the nothing is described as the uncarved block, and that the nothing is the source of the myriad things.
Those texts further reveal that it is the “uncarved block” that holds the most potential and beauty, more so than any carve or cut that will take place in the future.
SCALE LENGTH: 25.5” 648mm ELECTRIC, LEFT HANDED, 20 FRETTED THREE STRING, CIGARBOX GUITAR.
