donbenjy

anyone got any idea how the switching works for the middle position? Like on a DPDT how they're staggered...I'm looking into them for a similar idea, though I can make do without!

I have a motherbucker in my strat with a 5 way super switch to select: 1st coil/1+2/1+2+3+4/3+4 (parallel)/coil 3 I think there's an out of phase combination there somewhere too! tbh, it's so versatile, that I just use whatever sounds good, whatever it is! still got the schem if you want it? I've changed it loads since the original diagram, but if you can follow the paths, it isn't too hard!

hey, not been here for a while now! Sorry if there's already been a big discussion about this but wading through 180 pages is gonna take some time! anyway, I'm interested in modding my humbucker sized P90 into a sustainer (but retaining the original function of the pickup too.) in my Strat (p90 + motherbucker pickups with very custom wiring!) I've not had a look inside for a while (though I did build the guitar myself, so I do know what I'm doing!) but I'm pretty sure that I can deconstruct the pickup all right...I have a few questions though...If they've already been asked, just point me in the right direction! Ok, I do A Level Physics, so I get the concept of the sustainer/driver, but the actual construction is more tricky: I asked here ages ago about the P90 idea, and I'm sure that someone said that it'd been done before, but I'm unsure where I'd actually put the driver: would there be space inside the housing to mount the driver below the pickup windings (using the P90's magnet/pole pieces), or would it have to be closer to the strings? I wouldn't have thought so, because the pole pieces are close enough, but you never know! Would it be feasible to insulate the pickup widing with tape, and wind the driver coils over the current windings? I know this isn't the best idea because it would essentially mean that I couldn't remove it easily, especially if I used glue to "pot" it! would I need to add another magnet/core, or would the current pole pieces and magnet suffice? here's my current flow diagram: ATM I have the Motherbucker wired as-is with the killswitch and 5 way switch, and the P90 going direct to a blend pot, then master volume... My other thought was to possibly build a simple driver using the tthread in the tutorials section as a basis, and mounting it under the pickguard in the middle position, as I've heard that they still work well there...will the driver function well under 1/4" of plastic?! I don't mind cosmetically changing the guitar, but if the P90 is impossible to mod, then I'd rather not lose a pickup (though I might have to!) I've also been talking to the band about it, and our bassist seems quite interested in a bass version: any modifications needed for a bass sustainer, like adding more windings or stronger magnets? Cheers This is an awesome thread btw!

Hey, I was poking around today with an old little portable radio to see if there was anything i could salvage from it, and the thought occured to me that it might be fairly easy to transform it into an RF controller, that converts picked up RF signals from your body into electrical signals. Kinda like a theremin, but used to drive some kind of variable on a pedal? Anyway, I did a quick google but came up with nothing yet, so I was wondering if anybody has explored this before & happens to have a link to a tutorial, or if i'll have to draw out the schematic of the radio to compare with an RF controller circuit! I don't think it would be that hard to do tbh though! tuning the right frequency may take a while though

ok, it's all fixed now doesn't look too shoddy tbh; about as good as it could look without refinishing the head! Had a hairy moment when a little bit of the araldite had stuck the bracing I was using to the back of the head, but it turns out it dosn't stick very well to the laquer Tis all tuned up and working fine now though! not even a creak from it...the action seems a LITTLE higher than it was, but tbh, it's nothing drastic and it just feels like another acoustic to me! (though I mostly play electric so what do I know?! ) cheers for everyone's help anyway!

right ok, thanks for all that! It seems I vastly underestimated the tension that the strings would load onto the guitar! Obviously that's the weakest point of neck! We don't even know how this happened, she just found it in her case one day!

cool, thanks! lots of pictures here the bit attached to the neck is the bit I've started to remove the glue from, the side attached to the headstock hasn't been touched. The stuff kinda split, so where there are gaps in the glue on one side, it was there on the other. edit: oh yeah, there's a really thin "rip" of wood (the little bit attached to the finish) that's the only thing holding it together...should I break it off, or leave it hanging off?

I realise I made a mistake, and obviously regret it now, and usually I would've checked it out beforehand, but it was meant to be a fast repair and given the option between wood glue and "super strong 'wood glue'" that apparently does the job as well, according to the packaging, I chose the no more nails. Not that I'm trying to excuse my mistake, but I'm just saying that whilst it is good advice, which I do appreciate, I don't feel the need to be told off by the people I asked for advice. I did use no more nails on a variety of woods before (mdf, chipboard and poplar IIRC) to build things, and they've held extremely well so I assumed that with a more porous surface there should be no problem! evidently I was wrong though! :S ok anyway, I'd still like a little help from you guys as to the best way to go about this the 2nd time! would something like Araldite do the trick then? I assume that it's NOT a good idea to sand back the wood to try and get a cleaner surface as the join wont be clean?! I can remove the top layer of glue quite easily back to the bare wood, but I guess that's not gonna leave a nice surface? I'll take a picture later of a before/after shot of the removed stuff...

hmm, not sure how cheap pros are where you live, but I'd be expecting to pay upwards of £50 for a repair from a pro, and seeing as it was a very cheap guitar, the price difference isn't that big. the top layer of glue DOES come off so there is at least a rough surface to adhere to, and the break is exactly as it was before the glue was applied in terms of how it looks and fits together, whether the glue has saturated the grain may be another matter, but I can definately remove the top layer. Whilst I might be a noob with wood repairs, I'm not entirely stupid, and have enough experience with guitars to take on repairs myself...I appreciate that I should have looked into the adhesive more before I applied it, but in my defence it "bonds wood to wood" and "fills in gaps" so there was nothing to suggest that the stuff WOULDN'T work, not to mention that i'd used it in construction before with no problems. Anyway, I appreciate the advice with the glue, but your tone seems slightly condescending when I do know my way around a guitar well! for furture reference, what would be the best epoxy to use?

...I can get it off though! seeing as it was originally cheap anyway, taking it to a pro would be a stupid think to do IMHO as it would be easier to save up a little extra for the same quality intrument. If I can clean off the glue, what would be a good alternative?

ok, not AS bad as it sounds though: my girfriend's budget acoustic headstock has snapped just below the e-string tuners! the break is fairly horizontal(about 30 degrees to the plane of the neck) so there's a fair bit of surface area to work with here. I whacked on some no more nails "super strength" which is apparently stronger than the wood itself at about 3pm yesterday and started stringing it this morning (I know it says 24 hours to dry on the tube, but I wasn't tuning straight up to pitch. I wanted to try and get it finished for 2 and surprise her cos she needed to play..) So basically I strung it in pairs as I usually do to keep the tension even across the neck, starting with the e strings. My plan was to tighten the strings up to audible sound, tune to a really low note and work up VERY slowly. So i spent about two hours on just tuning now, and I got to B below the E...tuned everything fine to B E A D F# B about 4 times (as it kept dropping out) and got to a point where about 5 strings were holding the pitch, went to tighten the F# string and the head flopped off again! so *** did I do wrong?! I realise that I did't wait the full 24 hours, but by the time any real tension was there it was at least 19 hours! Is no more nails not strong enough?! I braced it tightely all night, and the join was clean and solid this morning! There wern't even any warning pinging noises! anyway anyone got any recommendations for something stronger than the glue I used?! (which can apparently stick a man to the wall!) best way to fix a broken neck?! Ideally I'd just go and buy her a new one for christmas but I don't have any cash! unless anyone can find a reasonable acoustic for under £50!? ( I somehow doubt it, but I'll check ebay anyway!)

cool, that kinda makes sense I love it! just gotta mount it into smething and grab myself a footswitch now!

*kicks self* ...guess what was wrong? I'll give you 3 goes. Yep, a short! it was across pins 1 and 2 of the opamp! Removed it, noticed the pulsing LEDs so I plugged it in and pure fuzzy, oscillating bliss! Very happy! Oh, one last thing- the gain control works oppositely to the way i'd expect...Did i just wire it wrong, or does the wiring need to be reversed? i.e. if the wiper was fully left in the schematic, is that full gain? oh and if someone wouldn't mind explaining what the "crossover distortion" does? Does full to the left mean that the LEDS are fully on, and the clipping creates the crossover distortion?

I dont think batteries would be an issue, as midi cables are capable of carrying current, so you could power both the midi pickup and the sustainer in one! Then just stick a switch or something in to run the sustainer on batteries when the midi cable isn't plugged in! You could maybe build a little router box externally to take the magnetic signal down the midi cable too, so that you didn't hve to plug both a jack and a midi cable in at once...couldbe either/or! probably far too much development and hard work for a single guitar project, but in theory, a mdidi pickup is just 6 individual string pickups in one and i THINK the roland system outputs purely the induced signal from the pickups. I kno that you need to use the VG-88 or similar "guitar synth" to convert the signal to real MIDI data. If the VG88 does take regular electromagnetic signals, just via a MIDI cable, then surely theoretically you could build a sustainer and midi pickup in one? In the same way that a sustainer driver can be used as a magnetic pickup? I wouldn't recommend developing ths for your project though, as it seems like a LOT of hard work and might take a long time to get everything working...it would also mean you couldn't have a midi pickup and sustainer on at once.

the sustainer will definately possible! I haven't erad too much, so I don't know if any adjustments would need to be made (try searching the thread for a bass sustainer..that would let you know if you can use a stock sstainer circuit with other string spaces) As for the midi thingy, email Graphtech to see what they say...I know you could buy 7 piezo saddles, but not sure if there is a circuit to work with this.

sorry, I couldn't work out if you've done this already, but have you tried the amp(s) using a different power supply to your house? like at your school or a friends house? Could be something to do with that? It'd be good to rule out either way though!

ok, so I've taken voltage readings across all the pins of the IC and the diodes (wasn't sure about the LEDS, but they measured the same voltage across both pins): ok: Voltage across battery: 9.57 Voltage at circuitboard end of red fly lead-9.54 Voltage at end of black flylead-0.01 IC1 0.76 0.76 0.71 0.00 4.75 4.80 5.01 9.55 note: I numbered the diodes in order from left to right, and the 3 last ones go from top to bottom D1 A-5.0 K-4.8 D2 A-0.00 K-0.00 D3 A-0.00 K-0.01 (?) D4 A-0.01 K-0.01 D5 A-0.01 K-0.00 Now, as I mentioned before, I don't know too much about audio circuits and the effects of certain components on the sound, but I would assume that the diodes should have a greater voltage across them? I get that the "backwards" one that goes from ground up to the circuit would have a high threshold before the voltage can flow the "wrong way" but shouldn't the other 3 be showing something? Or will I need to set the pots at anything specific? E.g. P6 might need to be one way or the other to get the voltage from the opamp? Oh btw, just whilst I've been messing with the circuit, I can't work out what exatly P4-crossover distortion is meant to do...it looks like when I turn it to full, the output of the first opamp runs through the paired LEDs and when it's dialled back, hardly anything passes through them. So which way is crossover distortion "on" and which is "off" if that makes sense? Also it seems that when it's turned fully one way, there doesn't seem to be alot of difference between the circuit being on or off...not sure which way this is though... thanks again to anyone that's helped out!

but people arn't talking about activating effects: they're talking about controlling them. Like Matt Bellamy with the FF in PIB or the newborn riff...anyone can bend down to do that, but it isn't nearly as cool Obviously mr Vex and others have thought of thinks like the fuzz probe, and ideally I'd want like numerous RF plates and "3rd hand" expression pedals for loads of parameters on my board though! As i think someone mentioned though, delay would suck in a guitar as it's first in the effects chain!

what happens if you forget the guitar, and just place your finger across the guitar cable when it's plugged in? so touching the tip, at the same time as the bit below that (with the same finger). Is that the same type of noise?

have you got any diagrams of how the guys wired it? Stupid question, but how loud/close to the amp are you getting? does the hum drop with the pickup selector in the 2 and 4 positions? Bear in mind that lace sensors are different to normal single coils so using settings that were ok with SCs might prove to not be as good with Laces, although what you're describing sounds more serious than that!

lol, just me then! hey what settings give you a good, saturated fuzz? It'd be useful to know what is meant to sound good than try an second guess my own circuit when there's something wrong with it! That way I can leave the pots all set up and test it without having to fiddle for 20 minutes!

yeah, that's what I remembered it doing on the protoboard! thanks for that! lol I think it's kinda amusing trying to work out what goes where on a pcb layour without components. Kinda like a sodoku

cool thanks, we have P4 wired differently, but mine has both the wiper and left lug running to pin 1 of the opap (as on the schematic), whereas you only have the left. I assume this would just reverse the direction that the control works though? it shouldn't cause the circuit to go wrong! Otherwise, everything is fine! thanks for that though. Just out of interest, how does the feedback oscillation on the pedal sound? is it pretty responsive and usable or just a high pitched tone? ok thanks, I'll try that once I've got a new battery, as I want to make sure it's not anything as stupid as that!

Cool thanks! Only problem is, Stripboard Magic is abit crap at showing the actual layout (i.e. all flyleads appear as generic grey dots!) so I've been using an excel spreadsheet to lay it out. The sheet is too long to take a screenshot so I've uploaded both an excel version (far easier to follow) or a CSV version (viewable without excel, but very hard to read) excel CSV I know it's not the easiest to follow, I'll have a poke around later to see about getting a Jpeg sorted! There are far to many flyleads coming off the board to take a good quality picture, but I'll try that later too. Oh and the highlighting on the excel spreadsheet: pink is just the ground rails to remind me yellow are connections that I made off the board directly to each other green are components that I havn't soldered: they were all for an on/off LED, and I haven't got a 3PDT handy to test that. The two 1K resistors in parellel dropping from the 9v rail are to supply the LED with a decent voltage. 1.Name of the project: T.M.K (too many knobs) 2.Links to the source: Schematic 3.Followed schematic exactly by copying into stripboard magic and then using the automated layout to draw a digram for stripboard. 4. 500k pot is 470k, 250k are 220k, 300k is 220k, 50k is 47k. The 10k is 10k. I used the following types for each pot (numbered on the schematic) p1 -can't remember, it's coded as B470k p2 - can't remember, "B220k" p3 - can't remember "B47K" p4 - "log B" p5 - "log B" p6 - can't remember "B10k" 5. I guess it's a negative ground...the black 0v lead from the battery goes to signal ground. 6.ok, I've had a more extensive play and, tbh, I'm slightly unsure if it's broken or not, due to it's randomness and the craziness the pedal already has! :S The things that are concerning is the feedback/oscillations- I seem to remember that it used to be much more "friendly" to control and broke up easier than now, where it seems that there is a threshold somewhere when feedback is full, input Z is high, and gain is just short of full...what I get is a really high pitched squeal, that doesn't build or change pitch nicely...sounds kinda broken which I['m sure it didn't before...also, the amount of fuzz seems quite small (i.e. still on the point of really breaking up, and I'm sure that the sound suited Muse's Plug In Baby really well, whereas now it's too clean still!) It seems like the upper end of the fuzz - the high gain stuff, doesn't seem to appear! But with 6 variables, it's hard to find every sound anyway! 1.What does it do, not do, and sound like? = fuzzes, a little - not too much. Oscillates badly. 2.Name of the circuit = TMK (Too Many Knobs) 3.Source of the circuit (URL of schematic or project) = Schematic 4.Any modifications to the circuit? Y 5.Any parts substitutions? yes, different pot values, as above 6.Positive ground to negative ground conversion? N Cheers for this!

can't see anything about them ot being keyed! maybe there's just something stopping it going on all the way - indicating that it's reversed? anyway, we all agree to try switching it the other way round yes?