Hinkler 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 haven't been able to put this thing down since I bought it. So much fun, great sound, a steal at this price. What This ISNT: A three stringed version of a 6 string fretted guitar What This IS: This is much more like a lap slide guitar that you can hold up tucked under your strumming elbow like a ukulele. The strings are tuned GDG, so you can one-finger bar cords up and down the neck. The strings are the three middle wrapped strings of an acoustic 6 string guitar pack (not the low E, but the three next ones up. They are light guage, its explained in the book as well. The fret markers are decals because this is meant to be played fretless, with a slide only The action is very high, which makes it forgiving when learning to use a slide. (If you WANT to fret chords or notes, I imagine all you would need to do is to replace the nut and bridge bolts with smaller diameter bolts until you get the action you want, the bolts just lay across the instrument and held in place by string tension - makes it easy to adjust the intonation) The neck is actually finished very nicely, with sanded edges and a clear poly coat; but it is still a square 1x2 board instead of a rounded neck ------because when you play with a slide, you press very lightly on the strings, as opposed to gripping the neck firmly to fret awkward chord shapes The only thing you have to "put together" are to put the little brass string ferrules in place at the bottom, string it up, put the floating nut and bridge in the clearly marked places (they are held in place by string tension), tune it up, grab the included slide and start shredding the blues. There are very complete and detailed instructions explaining all of this. The instruction book and CD could be sold for at least $15 by themselves as an intro to blues slide playing and guitar use. This guitar comes basically finished. The neck is sanded and finished with a clear coat. It is fretless, but there are fretmarker decals under the clear poly coat, so they wont ever wear off. The tuning pegs are attached, the through-neck is attached to the cardboard body, the body is already cut with F-holes and it actually sounds great acoustically. However.. IT IS ALREADY SETUP WITH AN ELECTRIC PICKUP! Its a piezo electric pickup (meaning it will acoustically pick up every bump and scrape against any part of the instrument, almost like a microphone) and there is no volume knob, which is a little annoying ... but at this price point, you can take it out of the box and plug it straight into a practice amp or headphone amp and play around with crunchy distortion, no soldering needed, no retrofitting, it is god to go out of the box. (If you want to use a practice amp, id recommend starting out the volume low and pointing the amp away from the guitar or stand back to avoid feedback.) Again, it is a cheap pickup, but having it already installed is a huge value. Speaking of box, the body is sort of an imitation cigar box. Its made of that same compressed cardboard of a cigar box (think like 2-3 layers of dense jigsaw puzzle piece cardboard) with a cigar box printed decal stuck/laminated on top. It is actually surprisingly sturdy, and the large size combined with the f-holes (sound holes) gives it a really nice volume, projection, and tone. My girlfriend is amazed at the sound I can get out of it acoustically, its great for playing in small rooms acoustically. The slide is very wide, but very thin walled, and medium length. Functionally, this makes it very light and easy to use for little hands, but will fit even the biggest finger. The trick with the slide is to put it on your ring finger and hold it between middle finger and pinky, so it doesn't matter that the slide hole diameter is large. Again, instructions are in the booklet. There are enough licks in the booklet and cd to get you started playing and improvising leads for basic 12 bar blues and blues-rock. After that I recommend checking out some Justin Johnson videos on YouTube. If I could give this thing 10 stars, I would. It's probably worth more like $60 at LEAST. You can buy a soprano uke for less, but the setup and intonation will be crap compared to this one. Only complaints is that where the neck meets the back of the body, its a little loose and makes a "stick/unstick" glue-tape sound that the pickup amplifies when I plug it in. Only a problem if I stand and hold it tucked against my body with my strumming elbow like a uke since it puts a little pressure right there, not a problem if I play sitting down with the guitar in my lap.

Pretty cool little cigarbix watch tuning it. Some of the adjustments can be on the cheap side and loose, but overall to play around and such good value for the $

The cigar box blues guitar arrived today, and I’m so excited. I bought it for my adult son as a surprise. He plays the guitar and has several different kinds, but not one like this. I don’t play the guitar or any musical instrument, but I just knew that Van would get a lot of fun out of this little cigar box guitar. I took pictures of it and texted them to Van. He was so happy and excited I had gotten it for him. Due to some really brutal winter weather, he won’t be able to come over for a couple of days to see it and try it out, but I’ll send an update as soon as he does. I can tell you that it seems to be sturdy — not flimsy like what one might expect given the inexpensive price. It has instructions and a cd with it along with the necessary wire, screws and everything else needed to make it work. I can’t wait for my son to try it out. UPDATE: My son came over this evening, and he loves this cigar box guitar! Tuning it was a little tricky, but he watched a video on YouTube, and it told him exactly what to do. He can’t wait to hook it up to his amp so that he gets the full sound. I’m so glad I ordered it, and based on my son’s enthusiastic response to it, I recommend it to anyone who either wants to play it himself or wants to give it as a fun musical instrument gift to a friend or family member.

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.

I read a bunch of reviews and for $30 took the plunge. Worth it. Not a toy. Well made. East to set up/string. The slide may or may not be the right fit, but it'll get you going until you find the type that works best for you. (I'm using a Dunlop 218, thick wall, 2"; rich sound.) The strings are so-so. At the recommendation of one reviewer, I threw on a set of Rev. Peyton's mediums for cigar box guitar [GDG] and the sound (run through a small amp) is fantastic. Aside from its basic playability, you can get all kinds of sound effects and overtones. A pick likewise pulls a great sound. This is a whole lot of fun. You can play guitar or dulcimer style. There are a variety of different tunings to try. Experiment. If you've never played guitar or only fooled around a bit, you'll be figuring this out in no time. With the tutorial and couple of YouTube videos, you'll be playing real tunes and real slide lines very quickly. Recommended.

Pure fun. Putting this together took less than an hour, and I was trying to share the experience with my (frankly mostly uninterested) kids. The body is cardboard, but actually pretty sturdy, and the rest of the guitar is wood with metal strings and fittings. It comes with a glass slide that sounds great and actually fits on my size-large fingers. The open strings sound noticeably louder than when using the slide, and the pickup (which seems to be a typical, unpowered piezoelectric) is quite serviceable, although it does not seem to pick up the bass (and there is a surprising amount of bass coming from this ukulele-sized little instrument). If you want to learn to string instruments, play with a slide, or try out a simple pickup, this is great for any or all of those goals.

I bought this having low expectations and thinking that it would sound like rubbish, but I was actually blown away by how easy it was to make this thing sound good. The build quality feels solid and I wasn't expecting it to come with a cd that you can play along to. Very nice gift! Also, while the strings felt like they were hard to find, they are quite common and cheap. However, it was a bit uncomfortable to hold. But I believe you can easily fix this by adding some padding around the hard edges. Other than that, all other problems are ok since I only paid $35 USD for it.

El producto llegó muy rápido, es muy fácil armarlo, y es muy divertido usarlo, lo compré junto con un mini aplificador danelectro, recomiendo mucho esa combinación. La caja parece de madera pero es de cartón, si es un poco frágil. pero por el precio me pareció muy muy buena adquisición.

This is a great package for the price. Not only do you get a small book with audio CD to learn some basic Blues Guitar Techniques but you also get a functional / playable cigar box (Style) guitar - The guitar sounds really good when put together right and it's not difficult to put together. Everything you need is included except for a tuner. The Cigar box is not a real cigar box and is made of cardboard; however, it is sturdy enough and if taken care of, it should last a while. My children enjoy playing with it and so do I. The neck is solid wood which is good and the tuning keys are better quality than I expected. The built in pick up also works really well. Considering everything you get in this kit, it's a fantastic value.

タイトルのとおり、3弦仕様のボール紙製シガーボックスギターです。写真ではフレットが打たれているように見えますが、ガイドラインを引いただけのフレットレス仕様となっています。自分でフレット打ってやろうと思ってカスタムしてみましたが、手に負えないほどのフレット音痴となり断念しました。おそらく、フレットラインとラインの間を抑えるのを想定して造られているのだと思います。 【致命的な欠陥】 ナットの直径が太いので、1フレット目は絶対にチューニングが合いません。私は細めの六角レンチで代用していますが、それでも3弦の1フレットは音痴になります。 悪い点ばかり羅列してしまいましたが、本体がボール紙製なのでとても軽く、ブルースプレイ専用のトイギターだと割り切ればアリだと思いました。あと、ピエゾピックアップ内蔵なのでアンプへの出力も可能ですが、ボリュームやトーン調整は出来ないので間にプリアンプ的な役割を担うエフェクターを経由した方が良いかもしれません。

Absolutely love it So much fun to play, and easy to put together.

Original