LED inlays

[Curtis P]

I decided for this guitar (RR5) i will do the shark fin inlays, but i was thinkin it would look super sweet to have them light up, with the flick of a switch, which is hidden on the back of the neck (very bottom just before where it bolts on) so your hand doesnt hit it, i think it would look super cool, but then again, i would have to put the batteries somewhere and do lots of wiring through the neck to make it like that, so, should i give 'er heck and go LED inlays, or not?

Curtis

[Brian]

Sounds good but I would re think that switch position...........

[Guest AlexVDL]

how about a push pull pot for the led on/off switching?

[Curtis P]

what you mean alex?

Curtis

[Snork]

What he means is that, you toggle the leds on/off. its really simple. the whole wiring is simple but i reccomend the EL light strips.

[Morben Guitars]

http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Electronics,_p...ntrol_Pots.html

If you can find a "push/push" pot, that may be easier, allowing you to just tap the tone/volume knob to turn the lights on or off...no pulling the knob up.

[Snork]

What you can do is attach a pot to the leds and the batteries, that way you can adjust how bright they are.

[Curtis P]

well, dosent sound to hard, i might give it a shot, but maybe not, i will keep you posted, sam, when your doin your inlay, are you just routing a little channel through your neck for the wires?

Curtis

[daveq]

Routing in the neck can be done but I prefer to rout into the fretboard. It makes it a lot easier when you go to attach it to the neck since everything goes on as one unit. Doing LED inlays is not a simple task - I hope you are up for the effort, time involved. You are going to back-light the inlays, right? Are the LED's going to point up, sideways, ... ? How are you going to mount them - directly to the shark fin inlay? What size LED's are you planning on using?

[syxxstring]

What about a motion/sound activated switch like thoose tireflys stem caps?

[Curtis P]

hmm, i dunno, kinda on a tight budget, i will let you know how it turns out, might just go with toggle switch and route the underside of fretboard, then have it runnin through the body, since i wont stain it, and it still needs to be planned and sanded to thickness, you wont see the peice of wood i will stick over the channel and glue down

Thanks alot

Curtis

[lovekraft]

... but i reccomend the EL light strips.

If you're talking about GloWires, they work on low amperage 120v A/C at 60 Hz - 4KHz. That would wreak havoc with your pickups.

[Snork]

Not like glowwires, and even so you have all this stuff going on in a shielded part of the guitar.pretty far away from the pickups

Sam

[lovekraft]

I'm a little confused - the link you posted is for electroluminescent wires, exactly like GloWire. It requires a high voltage audio frequency oscillator to make it glow. If you put any kind of audio frequency oscillator inside a guitar with magnetic pickups, it should at best raise the noise floor to an unacceptable level. Have you tried this? I know it works great on modding computer boxes, but have you ever had this stuff anywhere near your guitar? If you've got one set up, just play your guitar several inches from it, and see what happens. I could be wrong, and if so I'll apologize for doubting you, but I'm afraid it'll cause the same kind of hash/noise you get from playing close to a switching power supply. I'll be interested to hear your results. And FWIW, shielding only protects from EMI sources outside the shield. Let us know how it works.

[daveq]

And FWIW, shielding only protects from EMI sources outside the shield.

Oh boy, who's using the glowwire? The above is true concerning shielding and on top of that, a typical shielded pair of wires only takes so much noise away - it doesn't eliminate it. I hope this is just in the planning stages for whoever is considering doing this. Certainly worth trying an experiment before going too far with the real thing.