Primal

It seems to be a wood common in the construction of djembes, congas, and other types of hand drums. I suppose if its good enough for hand drums, it should have decent acoustic properties and would certainly be strong enough for a guitar body.

I was about to mention that, haha.

Image posting rules...

You can use sand paper, but I prefer to use a razor or scissor blades to scrape away the varnish. If you didn't scrape away the varnish on the magnet wire, you definately won't be able to get the sustainer to work. It would actually seem more complicated to wire the sustainer like you mentioned. Basically, just insert the sustainer circuit between your coil and your guitar's preamp.

Ah, my mistake.

It allows you you lock your tremolo so you can de-tune. However, you can't use the trem while its locked and detuned.

Buy a Tremol-no from our fabulous mod Kevin. :-p http://www.tremol-no.com/

Haha, the long term savings are the thing though. For the price of a single 9v, you could probably get a clip and a 4-pack of AAA batteries. But, thats beside the point.

Not sure about the actual switch wiring, but definately DON'T use a 9v battery. There is absolutely no need. An LED will run for years more than likely on a AAA battery or two.

Sure, you just need to find a stereo cable and the appropriate switches (usually just a simple on/off switch), along with a box to mount it all in.

Sounds as if the second jack is stereo which controls both the clean/distortion channel and DSP effects on/off.

Why not just get a small PA for extra sound reenforcement? Keep the tone of your Laney, just make it louder.

I never use my tone control on my bridge pickup. I always have it cranked to treble, and sometimes there still too much bass. If I get this working, I would like to experiment with a simple wah circuit to test a theory I have about the harmonic mode. If you have ever played around with feedback using a wah, you know how you can get different harmonics to feedback depending on the position of the pedal. What I want to try to do is be able to pick and choose which frequencies come through in harmonic mode. I don't know if it will work, or if it will even be useful, but its worth a try. As for one step at a time, absolutely. I'll be breadboarding the circuit and working out all the kinks before gutting my LP neck pickup. One question, though. More than likely I'll be using the pickup bobbins that are currently in the pickup for my driver. Other than the lack of blade core, can you think of any problems? Of course, I will be blocking up the bottom to make a thin coil. My only concern is that the coil will have a wider core and won't work as well.

Oh, don't worry, I'm not put off at building a driver at all. I've already wound one prototype, and I'm going to wind another today. Once I get all the bugs worked out and figure out what exactly I need (including which controls I will really need access to), I'm going to be gutting the neck pickup in my Epi LP and converting it to a sustainer. My goal is to be able to fit the coil and the circuitry within the housing for the humbucker in an attempt to create a self-contained system, with only the switchs, battery, and the specific controls I need separate (maybe even drilling the pickup cover and epoxying trim pots for gain and volume?). Hopefully once I get all the logistics worked out I will be able to add more to the discussion. My stepdad and I are also going to try to find a way to eliminate the pop on poweroff.

Hey psw, I have a question. Have you tried making a driver without any magnets? My stepfather (who is a professional electrician) brought this point up to me: the driver is essentially an electromagnet generating its own magnetic field when it is running. Since the magnetic field generated by the driver is created via an AC current (DC wouldn't be able to vibrate the strings), he couldn't figure out why exactly a static magnetic field was neccessary. Any thoughts? EDIT: Question answered by reading previous posts.

My Black and Decker hand drill is variable speed. The more you pull the trigger, the faster it goes. Its slowest speed is about 1/2 rotation per second (thats an estimation, I don't have it on me at the moment).

PSW didn't use the Fetzer-Ruby amp. However, fundamental/harmonic mode is very simple. Just take a switch (DPDT I believe) and use it to switch the direction of the current through the driver coil. In one direction it will be fundamental mode, in the other it will be harmonic mode.

Maybe scuff it up a bit and then soak it in a salt water solution?

I would have been tempted to go the easy route and just get a cheap cordless hand drill...

Okay, I tried reading as much of the thread as possible. I've recently become interested in retrofitting my Epi Les Paul with one of these. Here is my idea: I want to build the driver that saddles on top of the neck pickup and uses the magnetic field of the pickup rather than having its own magnet. I am thinking of making the driver out of a standard strat bobbin cut down, and using short magnets on the outside positions to wrap the coil around. Then, I want to lower the neck pickup enough so that the driver fits between it and the strings, and actually use the pole piece screws to secure the driver to the neck pickup. I don't mind the volume loss I will get by lowering the neck pickup, because I mainly have the neck pickup's volume almost at zero so I can switch to it for a cleaner sound while my distortion is still on. Are there any obvious flaws in this design, apart from the loss of neck pickup volume? I also plan on mounting the controls for the sustainer on the pickguard (using mini-pots and a small DPDT switch to switch from fundamental to harmonic mode). On a side note, does anyone think it would be possible to insert a tone control of sorts into the driver amp to adjust the frequency of the feedback? It would probably need to be something along the lines of a wah circuit, and ideally you would get the effect of the type of feedback you can get while using a wah pedal. If its possible, I would see it as a way to control which harmonics are brought out in harmonic mode.

I used the term linear to stress ACTUAL tension, rather than the resistance of the string to be pulled away from the fretboard (which would seem to also be affected by string gauge - bigger strings would be harder to pull away from the fretboard than smaller strings... or maybe the other way around, I'm really not sure). And by uniform, I meant having the same tension from string to string (i.e. every string having a tension of 16lbs).

I'm gonna say that it wouldn't be a good idea. Broken glass won't have squared edges that would facilitate inlaying. Also, after you glue them in, you would have to sand them down to be level with the fretboard, which means ripping up the frets, sanding down the glass (which I'm sure would be extremely dangerous), buffing the glass back to a shine, and then re-fretting. Plus, broken glass isn't something you wanna play around with.

On his spiel about guitar strings: "Also, for those of you and me who like to tune down or play in alternate tunings, when we tune the 6th string down 2 whole steps from E to D, having the wrong gauge is a recipe for tonal and and technical disaster." I didn't know there were two whole steps between E and D.... He might have something going for him when it comes to the string guages and tensions, however I'm not sure how exactly how uniform linear tension affects the uniformity of sustain, etc, between the strings.

Might just need to resolder the joint.

Hear, hear! I had the same thing, actually got a 3/4 tuition waiver... however, I couldn't use it because my state government pays my tuition. But my college director was FAR better than high school. I mean, my HS band was one of the best in the state, but the only thing all those awards were good for was bragging rights when it came time for All-County and All-Area bands. Once you get out of high school, you find that all those awards only served to alienate you from your fellow band geeks in other bands. One of my best friends right now is an alumnus from my high school band's arch enemy. I'd take college band camp over high school band camp any day of the week. By the way, I'd take an Oklahoma band camp over a WV band camp. I would imagine that it is MUCH less humid in Oklahoma... here, it sometimes feels as if you are SWIMMING through all the humidity...