Shane Speal admits that the first time he ate scrapple, he gagged. “I’m not from around here so I had never heard of it before,” he remembers.

Since then, he has become something of an expert on philosophy behind the Pennsylvania delicacy, even if he still doesn’t eat it. “It’s about making something with what you have,” he says, “even if what you may have isn’t the best.”

That do it yourself attitude has informed every portion of Speal’s artistic life, and become something of a mission for him as well, as a performer, producer, and dedicated supporter of local music in York and its surroundings.

In addition to recording and performing his own music, hosting a Wednesday night open mic at First Capital Dispensing Company, Speal is the producer and designer behind cigarboxnation.com, a portal for everything dealing with cigar box guitars.

It is the ultimate do-it-yourself instrument with roots in America as far back as the mid-1800s. And yes, Speal appreciates the irony of digital age tools promoting the use of instruments developed even before electricity.

He calls himself King of the Cigar Box Guitar, and in addition to several of his own releases, Speal has been featured on several compilation discs, having produced four volumes of the series Masters of the Cigar Box Guitar. All four can be purchased individually or as a deluxe set housed in a…you guessed it, a cigar box.

He was featured extensively in Max Shores’ award-winning 2009 documentary film Songs Inside the Box. In it he poses the question, “is cigar box guitar an art or a craft?” and then gives his own answer. “It’s a sickness, a virus.”

Speal discovered the instrument when researching blue musicians of the early twentieth century. “It was the simplicity of the thing that caught my attention.” As far back as the mid 19^th century, players were building primitive but workmanlike instruments using surplus cigar boxes, broom handles, planks of wood, and chicken wire.

Of course based on Spanish-style guitars that had been played in Europe and in the Americas for hundreds of years, the cigar box guitar still counts as an American folk tradition due to its ingenious reuse of something we still produce so much of, throwaway packaging. “Here were guys making homemade music on homemade instruments built out of stuff that was laying around.”

Speal found that playing an instrument with fewer strings (typical cigar box guitars have four, three, or two strings; three being the most common) may limit the harmonic possibilities of the instrument, but it forces the player to be inventive, instinctive, and open to discovery.

“You would be amazed at how quickly you can make it work,” he says. “Pick a tuning that makes sense or fiddle around and make one up.” On a recent night, Speal played original arrangements of the classic Robert Johnson blues “Love in Vain” and Paul Williams’ “Rainbow Connection” on homemade three-stringed instruments in the same set without batting an eye.

And while there are several boutique builders out there who can build you a luthier-quality instrument for around $300 (some of whom advertise on the Speal’s site) cigarboxnation.com features new and vintage plans as well as detailed tutorials on how to source parts and build your own instrument.

It also serves as a clearinghouse of music recorded on the cigar box guitars (and there is a lot of it; blues, bluegrass, rock, jugband and stringband music, avant-garde, folk). As well it is an important portal for the culture of homemade music in general.

Currently, cigarboxnation.com is sponsoring a contest for the best built double-neck cigar box guitar. That’s right, a double-neck; for that Jimmy Page in all of us who still wants to play something insanely cheap. The winner will be chosen by none other than the editors of Fretboard Journal, the premier academic journal on all things guitar .

And if such a venerable periodical is getting involved, is there a danger of the cigar box guitar losing its down home edge? Speal says no. “I think even they appreciated the absurdity of the idea.”