Don Rickert Musical Instruments(tm)

Our Instruments Turn Up in the Most Interesting Places!

In a posting last year, we described a commission to build a very special live performance-oriented electric (with active on-board pre-amp) for a repeat customer, Jason Johnson (a.k.a. Reverend Snake) of the Prodigal String Band (MySpace site is http://www.myspace.com/theprodigalstringband).You can read all of the details and see lots of photos of the finished product on Don Rickert's musical instrument portfolio (link in an hour or so).

Well, if you love really old-school (but somehow new school as well) Old-time roots street band music, featuring a Don Rickert designed Rickert & Ringholz custom electric cigar box fiddle (played by Jason "Reverend Snake" Johnson himself), look no further. If you want to see and hear it with high quality video and audio, PLAY THE VIDEO on YouTube and select the "Watch in High Quality" option.

electric cigar box fiddle, design, don rickert, music, old time, prodigal string band, Rickert & Ringholz

Photos of New Custom Electric Cigar Box Fiddle

When Jason "Reverend Snake" Johnson, a repeat customer who already plays some out there stuff on one of our baritone fiddles, called to see if we could build him a really tricked-out electric cigar box fiddle, we were delighted. As it turns out, this was one difficult thing to build...everything from the extra long neck to turning a regular "Don Thomas" cigar box into a structure that could take the string tension without imploding (lots of carbon fiber and epoxy resin), to the internal active electronics...what look like wooden dowels to the right of the bridge are gain and tone controls.

Man, it was worth it. The fiddle actually sounds really good acoustically, but is a wicked beast, sort of like a fiddle version of Bo Diddley's guitar, when plugged into an amp. We expect to see some YouTube videos of this fiddle soon, but in the mean time, you can see these bad boys of Old Time, The Prodigal String Band on their MySpace site (http://www.myspace.com/theprodigalstringband).

Click on any of the thumbnail images below to see a full-size version.

To learn more about having a custom cigar box fiddle built, go to www.fiddleandbowstore.com.

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Some Photos of Almost Finished Custom Electric Cigar Box Fiddle

 

One for the historical accuracy know-it-alls

I don't normally write such obnoxious blog postings, but I this is an exception. We've picked up some discussion on blogs and mailing lists suggesting that the machine tuners on one version of our 1860s style cigar box fiddle are historically incorrect...WRONG!

Everybody who actually knows the history of stringed musical instruments knows that geared tuners similar to those used today were invented in the early 1800s. The first Martin guitar (1833) has geared tuners. You can see a picture of it at the C.F. Martin website.

The current issue of 'American Lutherie' (Fall 2007, #91) has a very detailed article with lots of pictures of a pre-1860s Martin with, yes, geared side-mounted machine tuners.

What is VERY historically incorrect for anyone claiming to have a Civil War era cigar box fiddle or reproduction of one is pasted on artwork on the box. That did not start until some time in the 1890s. Before that, boxes were hot branded, stamped, and so forth, but no paper artwork like today's cigar boxes.

OK, I'll return to being nice :-)

geared machine tuners, guitars, cigar box fiddle, C. F. Martin

A Big Surprise, Part 2: Cigar Box Fiddles

Click on images for larger view.

From the first time that we ever brought a cigar box fiddle to a festival (I believe it was the Tennessee Valley Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention in Athens, AL), we knew that cigar box fiddles attracted potential customers to our vendor tent, especially if there was anyone playing one who was any good at it. People thought that they (the cigar box fiddles) were interesting buy never actually bought them.

Just when it seemed like cigar box fiddles were never going to be more than a crowd attractor, we were fortunate enough to be invited to set up shop at the first annual Hoppin' John Fiddlers' Convention in Silk Hope, NC. As had become standard, we had a 'modern' (made from a new cigar box we got in a cigar store) cigar box fiddle as well as a Civil War era replica model. It was at Hoppin' John that the proverbial 2x4 hit us up side the head...CIVIL WAR RE-ENACTORS! It seemed that every other person at Hoppin' John was in one North Carolina re-enactor regiment or another. These, people, as crazy about really really Old-Time music (before it was called that) as us, actually care about historically accurate period fiddles, fiddle music and playing technique...to quote one of these truly cool folks, in response to our offer to put a chin rest on a fiddle he was about to play: "What do I need a chinrest for?"

Checking into matters a bit further, we discovered that there are a whole lot of 'authentic campaigners' in all the places Rickert & Ringholz Musical Instruments had NOT been a vendor before, like Northern Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina. I suddenly remembered the re-enaction events I used to attend in Maryland and Northern Virginia, some had as many as 10,000 re-enactors. Actually played fiddle with a Confederate Irish brigade once or twice. We are starting to explore selling our Re-Enactor Cigar Box fiddles through the network of specialty stores (called Suttleries) set up at the larger events.

We want to hear from those of you who play fiddle, banjo, or more exotic instruments, such as soap box cello, as part of your re-enacting, presumably while encamped and not actually on the battlefield. There could even be a deeply-discounted or even free fiddle in it for you if you agree to be photgraphed and/or recorded while playing one of our instruments at a battle re-enaction event (Yes, you've got to be in uniform!). You can reply, either by commenting to this posting, or by email at drickert@bellsouth.net.

Now, for a treat of hearing a really great banjo player and period-style fiddler playing several of our instruments. Click here to see and hear on YouTube.

Rickert and Ringholz, Rickert, Ringholz, Fiddle and Bow Store, fiddle, bow, musical instruments, cigar box fiddle

The New Rickert & Ringholz(tm) Cigar Box Fiddles

After positive reception our first cigar box fiddle recieved 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 got ahold of an actual antique cigar box from the 1840s for guidance with respect to authenticity.

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

Here are some images of some of the prototypes:

Our prototypes have been extensively tested by several advanced-level players over time an extended period of time. We are now ready to go into limited production with a final design with the following major refinements:

• A little bit shorter, so that the instrument fits into a standard violin case
• Use of a Flesch (center-mounted) chin rest
• Use of highly visible "butterfly" joints to highlight the fact that the instrument is made from two small boxes (see the images below)
• There will be several neck and tuning peg options.

Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge.

 

Cigar Box Fiddle, Don Rickert, Don Rickert Research & Design, Donald Rickert, Rickert and Ringholz, Rickert and Ringholz Musical Instruments, Thing Farm

Cigar Box Fiddles

In an earlier post, I noted an observed trend having to do with musical instruments made from cigar boxes. The part of the trend that we are keenly interested in is cigar box fiddles. These instruments have a history going back at least 150 years. The cedar cigar box was introduced in the 1840s, and there were plenty of discarded ones around by the 1850s. There is pretty good evidence that home made cigar box fiddles were popular among soldiers during the American Civil War, as well as Irish immigrants and Cajuns of modest means. Also popular among the Irish fiddlers were instruments made from ham tins.

Today, some brave souls have tried their hand at building such instruments and have written about the challenges. They are a lot harder to build than one might think, at least if you want something that is playable. For example, see:

http://www.fiddlerwoman.com/id91.htm

http://www.geocities.com/cigarboxguitar/all_about.html

When Don Rickert Research & Design (then Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC), was condisering entering the musical instrument business (under the V-Gear(tm) brand), we ended up designing and building lots new violin/fiddle concepts that did not pan out when testing with people besides ourselves (i.e. consumer research). Just for fun, I built a cigar box fiddle, based on the following three primary criteria:

1. It had to have all of the critical ergonomic dimensions of a violin (distance from nut to bridge, nut to endpin, etc.)
2. It had to be capable of being played under the chin rather than resting on the arm. This was to meet the needs of modern fiddlers who hold their fiddle like violinists.
3. It had to sound good, rather than just "interesting" (i.e. horrible).

The results of this initial effort are shown here (click on the the thumbnail for a larger view):

We took the cigar box fiddle along with us to the 2006 Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention (it's actually in Alabama at Athen's State University), where we were field testing several other early prototypes of a travel/practice violin and and octave violin...everybody wanted to see and hear the cigar box fiddle!