Bo Diddley’s Cigar Box Guitars

The late Bo Diddley made his first guitars from old cigar boxes, an old folk tradition that gave them their distinctive rectangular shape. His name was probably derived from a single string homemade African instrument called a diddley bow. He approached a luthier from White Plains, New York with the idea of a customized square guitar. Other guitars he designed with the help of luthiers at Gretsch include “The Jupiter Thunderbird” and “The Cadillac” (modeled after Cadillac fins). Some believe that the secret to Bo Diddley’s sound is a wildly pulsating tremolo that, in addition to open tuning, might be attributed to the percussive qualities of these rectangular guitars.