Cigar Box Fiddles Old School

The cedar cigar box was introduced in the 1840s, and there were plenty of discarded ones around by the 1860s, during which the American Civil War occurred. There are many photos of soldiers, Confederate and Union, playing cigar box fiddles.

After positive reception our first cigar box fiddle received at the 2006 Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention, we decided to do some serious design research in the area. A few major discoveries came to light in the process.

1. Modern cigar boxes (even the wooden ones) are pretty bad from an acoustics standpoint. Even the nice looking Spanish Cedar boxes of today are really low-quality plywood with a cedar veneer.

2. Boxes having the ideal dimensions for a fiddle simply do not exist, as cigars are almost always boxed in sets of either 20 (two rows of 10) or 25 (three rows: 8-9-8). The result is that, if you get a box narrow enough (5.25" or less...otherwise, the bow hairs will scrape the sides when a proper bridge height and neck angle are used), it will be too short, requiring a REALLY long neck. If you get one long enough (between 13" and 14"), it will be too wide and fat (deep).

Our solution was to design an instrument made from two small boxes, such as would be used for a "Petite Corona" cigar, grafted together. We obtained an actual antique cigar box from the 1840s for guidance with respect to authenticity.

We designed various small boxes, all made from solid Spanish Cedar, and experimented with grafting them together using methods that would have been well-known by an amateur craftsman of the 19th century. A design decision we made that may be controversial with cigar-box instrument purists was to use either spruce or Western Red Cedar tone wood (one piece--not grafted) for the top.

Our antique reproduction cigar box fiddles are extremely loud and powerful. Some of the key features:

1. Deliberately primitive style neck fitted with Grover Sta-Tite side-mount geared tuners
2. A Flesch-style center-mount chinrest
3. Carefully designed to fit into a standard fiddle case
4. Historically correct box jointed corners
5. Body made from solid Spanish cedar (two small boxes joined together for proper fiddle dimensions)
6. Western Red Cedar tops
7. They have a bass bar and a sound post like a real fiddle!
8. Walnut oil and carnauba wax finish