What’s in that box? What did you make out of a cigar box?
I just finished a 2-string cigar box bass guitar. I’ve built a few rustic cigar box musical instruments as functional, playable decorators. They are great for folk, blues, and just having fun. If you spend more than $50 on parts you are doing something wrong. I am NOT a fan of fancy cigar box instruments; do not reinvent the known solutions (i.e., modern guitar designs and commercial products).
The body is a $2 cigar box, and the neck is a $6 oak 2x2. Using oak is not good because it’s open grain and doesn’t hold precise geometry well. Lesson learned. However, a 2x2 greatly simplifies the build. This bass would function just fine without the cigar box at all. This bass had been sitting around for a while because I ran into neck geometry issues and couldn’t decide on a solution. I was shooting for a 30" short scale from the 36" 2x2, but it ended up as a 28" scale (and that was barely squeezed in).
I used a bolt and a screw as the bridge and nut. They can be adjusted down with a Dremel or file if needed, but it is playable right now. The flat silver area is a piece cut from a soda can and ironed flat. It serves as the ground between the floating bridge (bolt) and output socket – it was humming badly before I added it.
It has a standard/modern bass pickup and wiring harness, so it sounds effectively identical to a commercial bass. The pickup is hand-inset and this required hours of cut-and-try fitting. It’s strung with the lowest (E) and highest (G) bass strings. For a bass one only really needs the lowest string, unless playing New Order, etc.
I’m one of the few who’s ever made an electric cigar box kalimba. However, we don’t have a kalimba thread here.