Andreas

Im considering which non-tremolo bridge to add on the guitar project im planing. Im thinking of a tunomatic bridge but all other options are just as fine. Im looking for a bridge that offers me the most adjusting options to be able to get perfect intonation and setup action properly. The guitar I would like it to be string-throught the body. The most imprortant factors would be ease of play, palm muting etc. tell me your feelings and coments about each suggestion.

I need to make the bridge disition to be able to calculate the angle of the neck by calculating according to the lowest height of the bridge.

Thanks,

Andreas.

One string at a time....well you have to be good at string damping, just like with a super loud guitar, and you can control the sensitivity (power). All six strings typically do vibrate if not dampend but the driver is only feeding back the signal that it recieves. The strings respond to the driving signal, very much more so, if they have the same resonant frequency. The pickup maybe trying to drive all of the strings but only the string that is played will have exactly the resonant frequency of the signal as it created it, if you get what I mean.

Yeah the signal given out will make forced vibrations on the other strings except the one with the same frequency which will be at the fundamental and will resonate. But I said that because I noticed that even the smallest string vibration will be picked up by the pickups and this will be continious small vibrations. Also the fractions of the fundamental will vibrate at resonance as well thus creating octave and harmonic problems. For example lets say you play an E note then all E (regardless of their octave) notes present in the fretboard (that are freted or open chords) will resonate since they are fractions of the fundamental. Again tho this will be minimal if dampened by hand which is the same case as you mentioned "playing loud guitar", but at low volumes i think it can create muddyness in the sound and loss of clarity especialy if you play something complicated that you dont have any spare fingers to dampen the strings. Of course we are talking about very very rare situations where they can be considered as negligible.

There is an effect that I have noticed that will dampen all sound output from the PUs by sending a driver signal opposite to the input and putting them over one another. The effect could perhaps be used to automatically deactivate unplayed strings from the driver.

That I believe is the best solution if you can manage to confie it to the strings not being played since it can stop all the sound .Also the idea of using opposite signal to cancel the unwanted signal can cancel the effect the driver`s magnetic field has on the pickups and not just the strings.(actually is the principal of the humbucker to stop hum if im not mistaken). This solution will also alow you to use a single driver and not as a humbucker design..less space used up.

The noise gate can hassle you if you want to play something gentle if it is required at the song. I once had some problems with that and ever since I hate noice gates.Maybe I did something wrong I dont know but the sound was continually interapted as it faded out and sounded like a cell phone was close which wasnt the case.

The individual string drivers I think is too much trouble and takes too much space in the long run with all the individual parts and if you make a mistake and hit string by mistake and do not damp it will resonate it again and the piezo for each string i thing is useless since even one string is hit all piezo will vibrate.

But wait theres more.....

The sound of the guitar is a product of the way in which the strings vibrate. So consider this. If the drive signal is modified (remember you don't hear the drive signal, it serves only to activate the strings) they whole character of the sound can be controlled. You don't just have unlimited sustain but a kind of natural syntheser that effects the sound not by modifing the signal like an effects box, but by actually changing the way the string fundumentally vibrates! Now that would be cool.

That is not actually 100% true I believe. Actually the sound of the guitar is disturbances in the magnetic field around the pickups. One of the thing causing them can be the way the strings vibrate. To see ...err..hear what I mean take a classical song that you may have around. Put it in a cd player or anything that has a headphones socket. Play it through the headphones (preferably small headphones that fit into the ear) and move one headphone close to the pickup of the guitar. The guitar now will sound like a full orchestra

The coil the headphones have inside creates the magnetic field that is picked up by the pickups. That coil could be the guitar strings so if a proper signal (the output of the headphone socket) is fed to the sustainer/driver normaly would make the guitar sound like that.

Nevertheless it easier and more logical to just take that signal and instead of passing it to the strings to be picked up into another less clear signal (efficiency losses) to send it directly to the jack of the guitar to be sended to the amp, which I dont see why it isn`t better to keep the signal out of the guitar and treat it alone which brings us back to the begining.

After saying all that I think that it is useless to spend so much time in trying to figure out a way to stop unwanted string vibrations for the folowing reasons.

1) The sustainer will be activated in a very small proportion of the playing time so the examples I said above become even more negligible.

2)In practice the sustainer will be turned on when infinite sustain is wanted. In such cases logicaly you will have all the time in the world to dampen the strings. When the infinite sustain is not needed the guitars own sustain will normally work just fine for every need you have.

hmm..that was a long post. Sorry for the wasted time

Ah..and remember I dont know most of these things as a fact, they are logical assumptions. (like almost everything that is known in physics)

cheers,

Andreas

Im thinking of putting biscuits in the glue joins of the wood parts. Will this make a better stronger join? Will it affect tone in any way?

I have a question for you psw. I was thinking about what you are doing and cant understand how you could make it aply on only one string. Lets say you play a single note on a single string and the sustainer is activated. If it covers all the six strings wont it force them to vibrate as well?

All I can thing of is making a dual sustainer like a humbucker. The one coil will act as a single coil and recieve the signal and the other coil will be the actual sustainer and send it to the coresponding part (6 parts in total) to the other coil to vibrate the string. When passive it can act as a single coil but when activated I dont think it can be used. The feedback from the sustaining electromagnet will drive it wild.

Just my thoughts for now. As I understant more of it I can be of greater help.

I believe that all of the guitar acts as a single system since it is one piece. That system has a specific fundamental frequency as each and every thing that has mass.

Now the string will vibrate at a given frequency and that frequency will "activate" the wood and start to vibrate it. The similar the wood fundamental is to the strings the more resonance it will have.

This means a heavy density wood will be of closer fundamental to the string and will have a brighter sound since more high frequencies (that are the ones that move less) will be allowed to pass.

The wood with low density will force those high frequencies to stop since as I said before move less and thus stop easier.

The bass frequencies are the longer wavelength (moving) ones so are not that easy to stop and will always pass but since they are lower in energy than high frequencies will die out faster, so the more high frequencies (denser the wood) are alowed to pass the longer the sustain but the brighter the sound. The lower the dencity the less high frequencies pass and thus lower sustain but warmer sound. Now that explained the vibration of the wood and not the string but as I said in the start the whole thing is one entity that vibrates as one. You can never have the strings vibrating differently than wood, unless they brake.

Of course there are more factors in sustain such as string mass, wood mass (not dencity) tension in strings, etc.

Umm..in a few words the wood acts as a filter (that was said before )

And as a side note...you can never predict the tone from the wood since wood is always differend even from the same tree. You make the guitar as good as possible (stronger = better) and the resulting tone will be unique and similar to other tones that the same wood make.

That is in my opinion and it is not writen in stone.

...

That is so stupid. I only use an ancient family receipy for that my grandmother told me.

It looks wery weak to me

I was considering of putting buscuits in my project..hmm usefull post to fall on.

Will it make it stronger tho than just glueing and just that extra strength is not worth the trouble?

And also does it affect the tone in any way or it is negligible?

I call it "guitar" . I dont know if it is lack of imagination or if she is just not the one for me yet.

(If someone who doesnt share the love we have for guitars saw all these posts he would say we are a bunch of perverts....oh well )

http://members.shaw.ca/roma/sustain.html

Does anyone know anything about this?

well, when i first started playing my rythym got all messed up because I used my right hand ( and i didn't have very much to begin with) but eventually I got used to it. I' ve tried playing Hendrix style and i don't find it that bad. i just hardly have had time to practice at all. The only thing that bothers me is that when playing hendrix style I hate the idea of having the controls on the upper bout. I think that controls should be behind the bridge and that way there out of the way. Has anyone ever seen a guitar like that cause I'm constantly hitting the controls when playing aggressively (including the pickup switch on the upper bout.

I still mess up the rhythm alot. I think this is a universal disadvandage of leftys playing right handed, but there is nothing you cannot practice and perfect. If you really found it not that difficult then go for it and see where it leads you. Now about the controls am not sure what you can do unless you buy a left handed guitar.

the thing is psychologically speaking, left handed is better. the right side of your brain is more musically inclined and from my point of view (maybe not but...) it would help you unlock all your potential and creativity. Yeah it would be hard to start over but I think the ability you show on the right side could serve as motivation that you could be as good or better from the left side (and it would cool to tell to people that you could play the guitar left and right handed!) anyway, sorry I got off the subject.

I dont think this has to do anything with what hand you use to fret. I mean you dont use your hands to listen to music and the things you play are not by your hands alone. The way I see it is that you remeber musical patterns in your mind`s ear and play them and listen to them with your ears. I had the same idea as you to play both ways a few months ago (almost a year) but I rejected it as soon as i tried it out. You will have to start from scratch and neglect your normal playing feeling and this will set you back since you will have to re-learn the feeling of playing with your other hand.

http://everythingsg.com/Gallery/customshop...al-Standard.jpg

http://everythingsg.com/Gallery/customshop/Special-Bass.jpg

!! Right about now I wish I had a wishing machine

thanks. ever thought of playing Hendrix style?

Not really. I dont believe that if you are left handed you should start play left handed guitar. First of all you will have very few options in the guitar market, and after all even if you are right handed you will not pickup the guitar and play like a master. You will have to start from 0 in both situations.

I suppose it could be a problem but not the worst i've had with guitars. I'm left handed and i learned right handed. It may pose more of a problem if I use the EMGs because they need to be closer than normal but I suppose that if you use less of the pick it will help you control it better but i'm not really worried about it.

Im left handed as well and learned right handed

But as I told you before it will be a problem..be prepared for it.

I just finished the wiring diagram for my guitar.

It will have 2 humbuckers (bridge neck) and 2 piezo elements.

Two 5 way rotary that will sellect for each humbucker how it is going to be conected (Series in phase, Single coil (North), Single Coil (south), Series out of phase and parallel in phase).

Separate volume and tone control for each pickup in concentric pots.

A 3 way pickup switch that will select between bridge or neck humbucker or both together.

A 3 way pickup switch that will select between piezo / piezo+humbuckers / humbuckers.

The piezo will have a Fezter Valve preamp that emulates the sound of fender valve amps which will be of controlable gain.

And before exiting throught the jack it will have a switch that will activate a sustainer circuit of controlable "sustainability" via a trim pot.

And finaly another switch that will acivate a stratoblaster booster to enchance the signal and overdrive better or increase volume.

(Note: Both sustainer and booster can be on at same time.)

A trully monstrous creation

where do you live. i can ship nearly anywhere in the world for five bucks. and well it will still be a couple of weeks before i am done.

I live in Cyprus. It is in Europe.

I have a strat copy of decent quality construction im willing to test it on..I would have to cut the pickguard to acomodate a humbucker but im willing to do so. I always wanted to experiment with that guitar but I never had that extra money to buy new pickups. (stock pickups are very poor quality)

I would love to try it out but I live far away from where you are so it would be a alot of shipping cost`s and also I dont have alot of expierence with differend pickups so as to grade it accurately.

a little getting used to, eh? It took me a hell of a LOT to get used to! I almost just returned the guitar.. but.. as you said.. after a bit.. ya get used to it. Do yours happen to have metal covers? I use a steel pick.. and when that sucker would hit that 'gold' cover.. eek. "click click click click"

Does the piezo element need to be placed near or on the bridje? Can`t it be placed just about anywhere on the guitar and still do the same job?..From what I understand the guitar vibrates as a system so the vibrations are throughout the guitar and the only way the placement would matter is if the guitar was vibrating in stationary waves like the strings and form nodes and antinodes.

Ah ok...but let me tell you something else I just remebered. Have you ever played on a 3 humbucker guitar before?...The middle humbucker can and will get in your way when you play especially if you pick by letting alot of the pick to plunge into the strings. It is something you can get used to tho..I have but I see it when others play my guitar with the middle humbucker they tend to hit on it alot and complain...but then again my guitar is for me to play and not them

Just a side note...You said about 2 3-way switches. I think you have to have one switch thats deals with pickup change and the splitting, series/paraller etc. can be done on other switches. This is because I had an expierence with a complicated system I made that you had to acitate the middle pickup and then activate separetly the other pickups and it was a big problem since I had to flick 2 switches when I wanted to change a pickup and it was very difficult and time consiming. I strongly suggest to keep any changes you might want in compination to strictly one switch flick. Think your compinations over and try to get all possible with one switch change. You may already know this and this was a useless post but better safe than sorry.

ah thanks Jammy

I suspected that from the circuit itself but I needed reasurance.

If you saw the topic before about the humbuckers with rotary and the booster Im now modifying that to do a sustainer circuit with a booster that each can be activated individualy and/or together. The sustainer is from this site...

http://members.shaw.ca/roma/sustain.html

As soon as I finish it Im going to post it for all of you to check it out.

I dont have time now to read the thread..I have to go. From what I saw it should be an on/on DPDT. I want it as a bypass switch for a circuit im working on..I found info that show how it should be wired but I want to know how it works so as to understand better.

Just a simple question that helps alot right now..

on a two way swich what is connected to what in each position...I mean..

http://www.guest.animebliss.net/BIOU/untitled.GIF

(a picture worths a thousand words)

Please tell me what joins with what on each one.

thanks,

Andreas.