Handmade Music Factory

by Mike Orr

With this book, you can create enough footstomping instruments to start a band, using recycled materials such as cigar boxes, soup cans and cookie tins. Detailed instructions are provided for making four different guitars (three-string and four-string slide guitars, a fretted four-string tenor guitar and an ironing board lap steel guitar) and accompaniment instruments including a one-string washtub bass, a soup can diddley bow, and a stomp box and washboard wired for sound pick-up.

A gallery of examples encourages you to get creative and adapt the plans to your own found objects. The book also explains how to create homemade electric sound pick-ups that can be installed in any instrument, and how to make an amplifier from a tape deck. It includes helpful woodworking tips throughout and templates for the guitar necks and frets.

Softcover, 8 1/2" × 11", 159 pages, 2011.