Hello, I'm Bruce Lee Rose. I spent years building and repairing stringed instruments of all kinds. Along the way I've been written up in magazines, newspapers, profiled on the PBS television program Wisconsin Life (you'll find two clips from that shoot on our Video page), and filled a wall with ribbons and awards won at fine art festivals. During this time our cigar box guitars have shown up regularly on stages throughout the US, Europe, and even the far east. Cigar box instruments represent a quintessentially American art form. Cigar box fiddles, mandolins, banjos, and especially guitars, have been around for nearly two hundred years, appearing shortly after the introduction of the modern wooden cigar box in the 1830s. My gggrandfather, Robin Rose, carried a cigar box fiddle with him while fighting in the Civil War. I continue to build my cigar box instruments by hand, much as my forebears did, starting with a used wooden cigar box, an oak or maple board and strings. But while continuing to pay homage to my Appalachian forebears, I have also incorporated the tools and techniques of modern luthiery, introducng improvements I am confident my gggrandfather would have appreciated like geared tuners, modern fretwire and even electronics, as well as more subtle internal changes that give my instruments more acoustic volume and tone. While ever mindful of the history and traditions of my craft, I am nonetheless continually looking for ways to improve upon the performance and playability of my instruments, for just as was true of those built by my relations so long ago, these are works of art meant to be put to work.
