Ace Frehley Flashing Guitar, Electronic Ideas?

[psw]

For the last 5 years all I ahve been thinking about is.....I've gotten to old now I don't recall...

Yes...perpetual problems about EMI...but you have a bunch of problems with the electric guitar that puts you in a catch 22.

Firstly...you won't stop EMI with anything non-magnetic...so copper and aluminium and such materials won't help as the magnetism will pass right through it. In fact...it can make it worse, building up eddy currents in the metals (because they are conductive) creating signals around the pickup and wires it is trying to protect.

Part of the problem is that the pickup is a sensitive magnetic sensor. It's purpose is to sense any variations in it's magnetic field...specifically the vibrations of the metal strings. In this project you have pulses of energy through a lot of wires that produce magnetic fields as the power is applied and stopped as in an electromagnet. Naturally this will also be picked up by the pickup...Snap!

SO...if you completely isolated the pickup by encasing it in MU metal or some other exotic approach...you may find a way to stop these electromagnetic signals getting into the pickup...however you would also stop the signals from the vibration wtrings...d'oh...Snap!

Of course, moving the pickup further away seems to help. In the sustainer, the driver puts out a signal to vibrate the strings, so we move it away from the bridge pickup that we are using for the signal. Unfortunately in this project, there is no escaping the lights and their wiring.

A large part of the problem is that the lights are changing. If you had a DC current, from a battery only (or heavily regulated powersupply) and did not sequence the lights...it would still make a noise if you turned it off and on...however you may have more luck while the lights were constantly on as you would not be creating fluctuation magnetic interference.

There may be pickups that are less susceptible...perhaps a good active pickup...but this is just speculation...this is unlikely to work....in fact it can't "solve" the problem as any magnetic pickup is there specifically to pickup magnetic signals and and anytime you have a lot of wire and pass an AC current through it (by turning the lights on and off..ie alternating between 0 and +9 or whatever you are using as they switch) you are creating magnetic energy and this naturally will be heard by a magnetic sensor or indeed any wiring in the vicinity (you can think of the guitars wiring all the way down the cable to the amp as simply and extension of the wire in the coils of a pickup).

I would be very wary of mixing the lights circuitry with the ground. You may well set up a dangerous situation and potentially damage your amp as voltage could be applied directly into the amp as well as the lights. At the very least it is likely to transmit the ground signals in the light circuits directly into the amplifier to be amplified further!

...

pete

[billm90]

Thanks for all that info Pete.

I feel like I am just starting to get a graspe on all this.

I should have done this to an acoustic.

Now I am wondering if piezo's would sense EMI?

[Vinny]

Awesome Job Bill ! It really looks like Ace's guitar. -Vinny