STERLING — If you’re looking for a unique gift for a music lover in your life, one town resident has just the thing.
Peter Cranson first started handcrafting guitars when his brother sent him a kit for his birthday five years ago for a lap steel guitar.
“While I was looking up other people who had done that, I ran into people who had built cigar box guitars,” the 44-year-old Wachusett Regional High School class of 1996 graduate and now teacher recalled. “Those looked like a lot of fun to build and play, so I built my first one, and then I built another because I thought I could make one better. The rest have been attempts to build the next better the last.”
Cranson has been a town resident for nearly four decades, and many of his family members also live in Sterling. Between his teaching career and raising five children with his wife, he doesn’t have a ton of time to devote to his Electric Road Guitars side biz, but he does manage to create about a dozen guitars per year, most of them custom.
“I work with people to create the cigar box guitar that they really want,” he said. “I think working with the customers to design and create a really unique cigar box guitar is my favorite part of the build. They often have ideas that I wouldn’t consider, and it makes the guitar that much more personal. One customer had me put a map of the national park where he and his dad used to go fishing on the back.”
Cranson has been a vendor at various craft fairs over the years, including one at the Sterling Senior Center in 2019 just before the COVID pandemic hit. He said any cigar box can be used to make the electric guitars, and that the wide variety of brands, shapes, sizes and colors of the boxes only adds to the uniqueness of each one.
“The necks can be made of just about any hardwood in most lengths or shapes, and the other materials — tuners, strings — can be purchased at most music stores,” he said. “There is very little chance that you will ever find two that are the same.”
While he does not have any craft fairs on the horizon at this point, one of his guitar creations was awarded a first-place blue ribbon at this year’s Sterling Fair. People interested in his craft can reach him by email at electricroadguitars@ gmail.com or on Etsy by searching electricroadguitar.
There are many positive reviews on Etsy from satisfied and happy customers, including one from a customer who purchased one of Cranson’s cigar box guitars for their son’s 16th birthday.
“Peter involved him in every step and made very creative suggestions,” they wrote. “He made sure everything was perfect before shipping it out. It is exactly what my son was hoping for and more. We couldn’t be happier with every step of the order.”
Cranson said he “will probably always make guitars,” and that for now, he is content to continue perfecting his craft one instrument at a time.
“There is a real ‘white whale’ sense to the build, trying to make every guitar better than the last. I’m always looking forward to the next one.”
