3 String Electric Blues Box Slide Guitar Kit (EBB)

I picked this up because my wife wanted to learn how to play the 3-string guitar. I was hesitant at first because it looked cheap in the pictures. The guitar arrived and we unboxed it. It is a cheaply made guitar.The body is thick cardboard, the neck is a solid hardwood, the strings are good and real, it has a cheap $1 piezo pickup. With all that being said, this guitar is actually great! The sound is really good! The tuning is easy, the slide is actually glass. We are very impressed!At worse if the body gets damaged in any way do not throw this item out. The way they designed this guitar makes it a perfect parts guitar. Just go to a cigar shop and buy a cigar box for $3. Use a basic small wood saw and a couple other tools, Watch a YouTube and easily make a solid wood cigar box guitar. I assure you that with very little experience you can use this guitars neck and strings to make a new CBG. You’ll just need to buy a new Piezo pickup, which is sold here on amazon for CHEAP. You can even use a metal cookie tin, lunchbox, etc to convert this into a new guitar.Out of all honesty this is a very good guitar. I give it 5-Stars because of the following. 1) The price is low, which makes it perfect for people on a budget. 2) The quality is low, but again of the body breaks you can easily rebuild it better. 3) The sound is good. 4) Perfect for any beginners that are wanting to learn the 3-String Guitar. 5) Has a great look that sets the owner apart from other cheap made guitars.

I did not expect much, but pretty cool for 30 bucks if you were curious about playing a 3-string cigar box slide guitar. Its pretty much slide-only, unless you have Chuck Norris fingers. That being said, you can plug it in, tune to GDG, and play some swampy blues. Using the right slide fit for your finger is key. Assembles super easy and cracks me up that the bridge and the nut are 2 loose bolts held on by string tension. Precious! Much fun for the price, and a pretty cool gift.

If you are curious about the blues and want to try your hand at it, get this. You get a basic intro. I found it a lot of fun. It is shipped with the strings off so one must install the strings and tune it. It has 3 strings and is easy to deal with. You will have to line the glass slide with felt so it will fit on your finger snugly. This is important. Also you can string it with A,D,&G guitar strings for a better sound and firmer feel (it comes with thinner strings than I like).

It's my first time playing a fretless cigar box guitar or any cigar box for that matter! I absolutely love this guitar especially for the price. It took me a couple days to learn the very basics of playing this thing. I searched YouTube for "fretless 3 string guitar" "lessons" "tutorials" "scales" by the third day I was making music. Once you learn how to play it properly, you can get some incredible sounds out of it! I'm shocked at the sound quality of this thing. IT SOUNDS GREAT! It took me a couple days to get the right touch with the glass slider that is included. This is much different from playing a regular guitar.Tip: if the glass slider is loose on your finger, wrap a little napkin around your finger then slide the slider over the napkin for a better fit and more control.I haven't plugged it into an amp, I'm waiting on a patch cord I just ordered. The acoustic sound is fantastic though. If you're not using a pick though, it's a bit quiet. Still, the sound quality is exceptional. With my Amazon points I paid $20 bucks for this thing and it was money well spent! I can't put it down!The kit was super easy to put together. If you're looking for a cheap cigar box guitar to see how you like it, you can't go wrong with this kit. Includes everything you need to get started except an amplifier & patch cord. Sounds great without any amplifier though.I think I just got hooked on a new addictive hobby!

I bought this because I'd always wanted to build my own, but was afraid it was too complicated. Over all, it not bad. The build construction is good and the over all finish is nice. Apart from putting on the strings and sliding the two bolts under the string, there's nothing to assemble. So I wouldn't actually call this a "kit". (Many professional guitars have bridges that come off if there are no strings).Anyway, in terms of playability;The Neck:If I try to play this fingered rather than using a slide, I find the corners on the slab neck uncomfortable after only a few minutes. - I'm not expecting an expensive pro Fender neck or anything, but the it's about a 1/2 inch too wide on top and bottom, which means the strings sit in the center of the neck and your hand has to stretch over two 90 degree corners of the wood-block to play the strings. Kids would likely find this more difficult. (I will probably sand off the sharp back edges).With a neck scale so short, there's really not a lot of tension on the strings, so I think the width of the neck is a bit over kill. I don't think a narrower neck would bend. But that's just my opinion.String Height (action):I found the action to be quite high when this arrived. It's marketed as a "Slide Guitar Kit", so I can't fault Hinkler for selecting the particular height. Personally, I prefer a combination of slide and fingered notes while playing. So I ended up swapping out the neck bolt for a narrower bolt and the bridge bolt for an Allen Key. It brought it down significantly, but sharp neck corners and additional width mentioned above make it (still) a little difficult to barr chords.Intonation:Over all, the intonation was what you would expect form an instrument constructed to resemble a home made cigar box guitar. But my ears are very pitch sensitive. - An easy fix for a rough intonation adjustment is to slant the bridge about 10 degrees. Making this adjustment with the original threaded-bolt bridge caused the string to bend or pop out of the thread slots. - Using the spare Allen key meant the bridge was smooth and didn't distort the string when adjusted. Still, I found the intonation to fall apart on the 11th fret. (One fret short of an octave). So doing a lead part on the high G over a low G drone meant the note on the 12th fret was 3/4 of a step off - ie not in tune.Pickup (Piezoelectric Transducer):This guitar comes with a fairly straightforward piezo $2 pickup. There's no volume control. (I didn't expect one). But be aware that it's very sensitive and prone to feedback. - My one complaint about the piezo is that it seems to be mounted just under the bridge. I'm not sure if this is to save cost of an additional 4" of wire required to mount it up by the neck, but if you're a person who mutes with their palm or places their palm on the bridge to strum or pick, the piezo will pick up every thunk, slide or movement louder than the string tone. This also makes the guitar sound a lot brighter when amplified. Thus contributing to it's tendency to feed back. - I haven't opened up the box to see if there's enough cable to move the piazo location. But it's an easy fix regardless. - Moving it to the neck should improve the tone, sustain and hand-noise.CD & Book Content:The one last thing to mention is the book and CD the comes with the package. The book is laid out well with easy to read chord shapes. Beginners should find it easy to follow. The CD is a mystery to me. (LOL). I no longer have any computers that have CDROM drives. So I haven't listened to the content on the CD. A suggestion to Hinkler would be to provide a download link in the book for the content. They could save money on CD printing, be Green and provide the audio content to a wider (re: modern) audience. (Given that we're all buying online, one can assume we are able to download the content). Maybe that might help drop the price closer to $30 rather than $40.Overall. I think this is a fun little guitar that kids and beginners will enjoy. I've been playing for 37yrs and like pulling it out from under my desk at work so I can noodle around while I think. Given everything mentioned above, I think this would have been a more worthwhile purchase if it had been $10 cheaper. That said, having held one in my hands, I now know now that it wouldn't be too difficult for me to make my own.