grtvrm

In the adjacent deparment in my previous work guys had 10 KW CO2 laser and 3 dimentional manipulator hand with direct connection to autocad, that's almost getting close to your oscilating drum. This does not sound like a hobby DIY, rather small scale manufacturing that scares me away from this place.

I saw U2's Edge photo with a les Paul paved with small square mirrors - looks super. I now think if one may use small pieces of foil to densly inlay on the body and cover with laquer. May be it's not holistic approac but simple - did you see that before?

Hi Pete, you are truly prolific writer, that’s good if you decide to put it all in a book. I will probably spend some time on making the hex pickup, or will buy Fishman made for telecaster. I would love to have the sound of that poly distortion http://matthias.grob.org/pMusic/ppSound/PolyDemo.mp3

Just found the sound I was looking for, cool, esp. first 2 chords http://matthias.grob.org/pMusic/ppSound/PolyDemo.mp3 and nice article on that, quote below In '79, I understood, that the ordinary monophonic distortion limits the rock musicality. In order to keep the interference harmonics of the distortion within the harmony of the music, the rock guitarist mainly uses 5th and octave intervals. With separate distortion of each string, any chord can be played fully distorted and each note is clearly audible - no dirt. end quote

PSW, thanks, for extended explanation. Yes I am seeking for organ like sound or any other that’s different from what I have now; It may not be very clean and so not much sustained. I did not built many circuits, just read entry level electronics books. According to them one may build a good, low voltage, low current, amplifier with CMOS invertors (just use 3 of inverters), and 1-2, outside resistor and capacitors. Some chips designed to drive old TTL logic and have output current of 10mA, that’s more then enough. The waveform of oscillating string is not pure sine wave. So even 10% of harmonics distortion will not spoil the sound that much. So it’s really feasible to build onboard “clean” amplifier with CMOS logic. Hex phonic sound is really cool thing that should be simple with CMOS chips and minimalistic circuitry. As it was noted by fookgub the problem is inter modulaton of string notes. As I build few power amps I know its a problem. And one channel circuits have this inherent – the inter modulation, as soon a there is nonlinearity in the signal channel or compressor pedal or somewhere. Seems I am from another school of guitar builders, I really do not see beauty of 1 channel (and even 6 channel) sustainers.

Who knows what will be effect of wiring piezo pickups (e.g. buzzers) in parallel or in series to equalize their output with humbuckers. If I buy a 500 buzzers pack? I do not want to drill my guitar or mess with even more wires and batteries. I want to passively mix them and straight to the amp. So using them in stacks seems rational? Also do you know about cigarette lighter piezo, are they as handy and efficient as buzzers? Thanks

That’s a real hack! We think along same lines, check out my idea of CMOS inverter as onboard amp right for piezo and how to make saddles out of piezo cigarette lighters, though I foresee I do not have enough patience to implement this. I did the buzzer pickup without amp and did not like – the output is much lower than humbuckers. Did you try putting pickups in parallel or in series, man you have 500 of them

Thanks for info, Do you have a link for this? I was really impressed to see the sustainer thread, though it’s demo tone is not very clean either. A lot of distortion / harmonics is not a problem as soon as they are multiples of the one base frequency, it just changes timbre of a note. Harmonics spoil the sound when all notes in a chord are mixed in 1 channel and then we add nonlinearity producing harmonics. We get harmonics of all base frequencies of a chord and all their sums and differences that makes a good white noise. So having 6 channels and uncontrolled nonlinear gain should not be so awfully sounding. May be even better than 1 channel with small distortion. So I started the thread asking for a sound sample of this machine. I bet sustain should be long for any real musical purpose (7-10 sec). Infinite sustain though is good to repel mosquitoes at night See as just 3 equal amplitude harmonics produce almost square wave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Synthesis_square.gif

Did you ever see or hear implemented CMOS inverter as an onboard guitar amplifier. One chip has 6 inverters and each one takes 2 resistors to become an amp. Sounds good especially for hexaphonic amp. Voltage may be down to 3 volts, high impedance, linear gain does not matter but sustain should be extremely long, Most important you may play sustained chords unlike the normal 1 channel distortion!, the rest will do a multi effect pedal that is cheap, like Zoom G1 See that link on CMOS http://www.fairchildsemi.com/an/AN/AN-88.pdf Next idea – piezo 6 channel pickup DIY from piezo cigarette lighter, saves you some 150$. I dismantled a lighter it has tiny cylinder inside – should be piezo element Sounds stupid but all you need – fit these bustards under the string or bridge saddle and solder 1X6 wires right to the CMOS invertors, then you need 1 resistor only for each channel. If it makes a spark, can it drive a high impedance amp? 2AAA bats + 1 CMOS chip + 6X3.3M resistors + 6 lighters = almost moog guitar