My first cbg was a three string made from a really cool Niles and Moser Chancellor box. I think I built it in an afternoon. Against the odds it worked, stayed in tune and was fairly playable - if you ignored the biting fret ends. Since then I’ve built about 20 or so and like the first, each has presented me with questions or problems that prompted construction of the next. Once my awe with the original cbg waned and I started to see it with a critical eye I was bothered by the lack of acoustic output. I built 3 or 4 the same way and all of them were pretty much useless without an amp. That (and the historical work by Speal and McNair) got me thinking about the sound of cbgs 150 years ago. Clearly they were doing something quite different from what I was doing, since they seemed to have produced a useful instrument that didn't rely on electrical amplification. I wanted to know how you could get enough volume and a pleasing tonal quality out of a cigar box without the pickup. …