optical home made pickup idea

[Tezifon]

i was in home browsing, then something appeared in my ****ed mind

try this

get an optical mouse, put it in top of an guitar/bass in the neck pickup position, six big e string

play the string¡¡, the pointer vibrates a lot ¡¡

then, it is basically a ligthwave system, at 10 eur the cheap optical mouse, can buy 4 cheap to get the optical sensors and led from they, they will do the basics for a bass pickup, the hard thing is the optical/sound circuit

some more ideas? this can be a good one open proyect

[Brian]

That is an interesting thought but transfering the signal to sound has been the biggest problem for guitars. The most sucess has been in the Bass Guitar field so far.

[Roli]

Yes, what's the frequency curve of that kind of signal, what about its voltage and what's the best way to (pre)amplify it?

[jbkim]

This sounds similar to the photon system that I remember from the 80's but that was (is?) for midi.

[Jehle]

Well, the problem is that you get a digital signal from the mouse, not an analog wave form.

I suppose you could find a place in the circuit where the signal is more analog (before it gets digitized and translated into the serial mouse protocol) and amplify that.

[krazyderek]

couldn't you wire the mouse to a distortion pedal... err.... i duno.. that's a weird one... you'd almost have to have an onboard computer to interpret the signals since each note on the string causes the string to oscilate in a certain speed, you could write a program to interpret those speeds view by the laser (otherwise known as frequencies).... so the mouse see's the string moving at frequency A on the e string, according to the selected patch that frequency coresponds to sound A-ES in the sound banks... sound familiar??? *hint hint* the roland system maybe? lol but it stands that you could make the guitar sound like anything.... distorted.. bass, piano, fish, drums, wind, fire crackles, fire works, the software would be your biggest obstacle, roland put out a couple of versions of software boxes for their midi guitar pickup before they had something amazing like the VG-88 system.. tracking (software lag) would also be a big issue..

[guitar_ed]

Howdy,

The folks at LightWave Systems have already figured it out.

How they do it I don't know.

Guitar Ed

[ansil]

you can actually do a similar thing with a led adn ldr

[darren wilson]

Try http://www.lightwave-systems.com/

The other link isn't right.

[crafty]

It's certainly an interesting idea. Optical mouses just use an bright LED and a small CCD or CMOS chip to "see" the terrain the mouse rides on. I know that Morley pedals use opto-electrical technology for their wah pedals. They just use key-shutters to vary the light that the sensor "sees".

It probably wouldn't be too hard to create a circuit to generate the sounds over a given frequency spectrum. The mechanics of putting it all together would probably be the toughest part. I think that's probably where piezo and magnetic pickups have the advantage. Piezo preamp electronics would probably be pretty close to what you'd need to generate the sounds you want.

[ansil]

hmm kind of easy way

six IR phototransistors mounted under the strings. IR leds.

basic sensitivity circuit wired to the normal picup that takes a certain amount of sensitiviy from the magnetic strings to get it going

the mechanical housing of it isn't that difficult. unless you have troulbe working with fiberglass or plexiglass or any plastics

[5thString]

That's an interesting thread. I don't know if Lightwave-systems are still alive though.

Anyway, I have a complete Lightwave system that I plan to mount on a six fretless. It's basically made of six independant bridges, each one hosting both an IR cell and a brass bridge on a piezo.

The IR stuff is just meant to bring harmonics to the piezo signal. You can't use the IR signal "as is" - instead it is mixed to the piezo signal.

Also the sound you get from this system is amazing, it's a real pain to setup.

And the bridges are ugly, so reproducing (I don't mean copying the original design, wich is patended, but finding another way to attend the same result) the electronics to include them in more stylish container is a good idea.