Last Year my mother asked, “What do you want for Christmas?”  I answered “Why a cigar box and yardstick of course.”  Box and yardstick in tow, I searched for scrap wood, a slotted spoon, a fork, a skeleton key, some suspenders, a belt and whatever else I felt thought I could use. Within a few weeks, I had a good sounding acoustic three-string guitar and a whole new appreciation for common utensils. I then took on the challenge of amplifying the guitar since I play live music every weekend and I wanted this thing to be heard. I learned about alnico – a system of five magnets, thread size wire and the workings of magnetic pick-ups.  I cut a bobbin out of wood, put six to eight thousand wraps of wire by hand around it, soldered tone and volume knobs, plugged it in and let her rip.  I couldn’t believe all the great sound that came out of that little box. It was capable of producing sound that was sparkly clean all the way to the heaviest of distortion.

I’ve been playing the red one quite a bit and it almost never strays out of tune and it’s extremely durable. 

I plan to keep making a variety of these unique instruments to sell so that other people can have fun with them too.  Thanks for checking them out!

Tony T

Tony is our metal shop lead and has been with TSI for 10 years.  Check back soon for his bio in Meet the Staff Mondays.