Paul Cardone of Glens Falls retired after 30 years as an aide with Capital District Developmental Disabilities Services Offices. Now he makes electric three-string cigar box guitars by hand in his studio at the Shirt Factory Arts and Healing Center in Glens Falls.
The business, Cigar Box Guitars by Doc, had its start in November of 2012.
“I was researching music online and came across this guy playing a Muddy Waters tune on a cigar box guitar,” said Cardone. “I investigated and found a website called Cigar Box Nation which has instructions and support for making your own.”
The first guitar he made in May 2012 was out of an olive oil can. “I’ve been making them ever since and each one is better and better,” he said.
The three-string fretless guitars have pickups installed so they are electric. They are meant to be played with a slide, he said.
Each guitar is unique, many of them incorporating “stuff found in your junk drawer or woodshed,” said Cardone. “I use drain covers, eyebolts, a lot of different types of grommets and ferrules, hinges.”
Recently, “I got a great idea for a tremolo system using a doorstop,” he said. “I’m making my own slides out of wine bottle necks. I also make amplifiers out of cigar boxes. They’re 2.5 watts and they run off a 9-volt battery.”
He said the sound is “right out of the (Mississippi) Delta. You can play all styles of music, but the slide gives it that blues tone.”
“Being left-handed, I never got to play a good guitar,” he said. “You always had to pay 25 percent more for a left-handed guitar, so I’d just play a right-handed one strung upside-down. It taught me that it’s not really the guitar, it’s the hand. You just work with what you have.”
Customers can pick their own box, buy a ready-made guitar or bring one in to be converted into a custom guitar.
The guitars are available at Samantha’s Cafe and Catering at Union Square, 11 Broad St. in Glens Falls, and out of the Cigar Box Guitars by Doc Studio in Suite 311, The Shirt Factory Arts and Healing Center at the corner of Lawrence and Cooper Streets in Glens Falls.