About Treadstone Guitars
Well, I was given my first guitar when i was 14, one of those horrid Encore Strats in black and white but I loved it. After a few months I saw Kirk Hammet playing an all-black Strat and my first mod, an Encore strat with a black scratch-plate made out of a plastic sheet was done. Since then, I have tinkered, fixed, modified and…. butchered every guitar I’ve ever owned.
I’ve been in bands, mainly metal but I’ve always loved Delta and Bluegrass. Even as a kid I loved listening to John Lee Hooker, just a happy guy singing about being sad with a barely tuned guitar and his own foot. As for the more big-budget polished studio blues that’s been around for the last 30 years, well each to there own, but they bore me to death.
I found out about Cigar Box Guitars a couple of years ago, by a friend who suggested I should make one. The idea that I could make an actual guitar from scratch rather than mauling with a pre-made guitar seemed far-fetched to say the least!
Using little more than a few wood-working tools, a used cigar box and a scrap piece of mahogany, my first build was painstakingly slow but I did it, an actual guitar that was in tune, had a piezo pickup in it and sounded (to me, at the time) awesome. My friend’s wife asked me to make him a Cigar Box Guitar for a Father’s Day present, and while I was making it, a neighbour asked me what I was doing and he ordered one for his son. After a year of bits and pieces like that I decided to set up Treadstone Guitars, and here we are.
With Cigar Box Guitars. my main ethics are to build tour-grade instruments that are made of recycled materials, and to operate at very low-carbon usage.
I also take in good six string guitars and re build them into something….unique!
Take a look around the site, get in touch for commission quotes or just say hi,
Rob.
‘Lily’ Treadsone’s first ever Cigar Box Guitar
