Led Pickup Ring

[ae3]

Hello PG-ers, I've had an idea (thats right). I want to make a pickup ring out of clear acylic/perspex/whatever it's called (you know what I'm talking about) and on top of that have a thin gold pickup ring. Okay so what I want to do with this is put LED's in the pickup cavity and have them engage either when I flick a switch or when I engage a boost switch. So it looks like a normal pickup ring, untill the area around the bridge pickup lights up.

So what I want to know is, how do I wire LED's into a guitar circuit? Is it easier to wire them in a seperate circuit or link them them in with the guitar controls? Any information on either of these options would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Bmth Builder]

You will have to wire them on a different circuit to the guitars electronics, and the LEDs will need their own battery/power source, you could probably replace a pot with a push pull pot and use that to activiate it, or just its own simple toggle switch that will need installing somewhere on the body.

[ansil]

if you get some surface mount leds you could encase them in the plexiglass

[Paul Marossy]

If it were me, I would do a test first to see how the LEDs illuminate the plexiglass. I would want the whole thing to glow, not just where the LEDs are. I would want kind of a neon sign effect if I were shooting for that effect.

Edited September 10, 2008 by Paul Marossy

[Quarter]

To get perspex to glow, you can imbed an led in the plastic, but the surface needs to have a rough texture for it to glow, smooth surfaces will not glow.

If you want a smooth surface to glow, you need to back light it and use colored perspex. Not sure if you would have enough open room in the cavity to properly back light it.

[Paul Marossy]

To get perspex to glow, you can imbed an led in the plastic, but the surface needs to have a rough texture for it to glow, smooth surfaces will not glow.

If you want a smooth surface to glow, you need to back light it and use colored perspex. Not sure if you would have enough open room in the cavity to properly back light it.

Interesting.

[ae3]

Thats a good point Paul, I think Quarter is on to something roughing up the surface, thats easy enough to do. Maybe I can find some semi-translucent plexiglass, that would work nicely, if it exits.

[Paul Marossy]

Thats a good point Paul, I think Quarter is on to something roughing up the surface, thats easy enough to do. Maybe I can find some semi-translucent plexiglass, that would work nicely, if it exits.

Let us know how it works out, I'd be interested to see it.

[ansil]

there are many many kinds of plexiglass out there. it also depends on how you want it to light up. if you are using the type of leds in cellphones you can mount them sideways and it will glow all the way around but it will take a few more leds but heck they are like two cents each depending on color. one row each way would be less than fifty cents. look on hackaday theres a guy there who did his backlight on a old pda device that way.