How's everybody doing? I'm new here, but I've been following this thread with a lot of interest, PSW, I've read 100+ pages of this thread, and man, I've got to say
I feel like I've known you for a lifetime
Anyway, PSW, you got me thinking (which, to some people who know me, is pretty dangerous)
And I hope it's OK for me to post a different branching of the sustainer idea I've been working on in my head, and hope this won't be taken as a deconstruction
of everything that's been covered so far.
My idea, keeps obsessing me back to the original patent drawings of the E-Bow, along with some promising info from someone's website, that has
participated in this thread, on his website he actually tears apart an Ebow, (kind of wish he had a heat gun to try and remove all that epoxy or whatever is covering the entire circuit board )
Anyways, he did take some good photos of the magnet/coil assemblies inside the Ebow and dammit, if they didn't almost look exactly like
the size of those hearing aid/camera batteries
So, I'm not sure how accurate patent drawing need to be, the patent itself was issued in 1975? IIRC, and the circuit looked like a basic 741 op-amp circuit to me,
(I also don't know if the lm386 was out yet, and internet searches couldn't give me a year for the lm386)
So, I decided to think my plan through with an op-amp
My idea focuses on the OTHER part of the patent, the polyphonic Ebow, I found a place that sells any shape of magnet and any size here (this is the Ceramic Magnet selection page, they also have every other type also) http://www.magnetsource.com/Solutions_Page...SCSceramic.html
Every diameter and height etc.....
So I figure I could get the round ones, maybe .5 dia, and .25 height (maybe more) Glue some plastic discs on each end and wind up these mini-coils
Kind of like a (I believe it was) Dan Armstrong Pickup, that had an individual Coil for each string (Someone correct me on that if I'm wrong)
Now looking at the Ebow, the Driver and the other coil are in-line with the string they sit over and are probably .5 inch apart, so I'm thinking, why not replicate this 6 times, and put them under each string, inside a housing like a humbucker housing or Music Man housing or those other big honking pickups that go on a bass?
Now....if the proximity of the driver and coil in the Ebow ALLOW the use of Op-Amps (not sure), then why not go with an LM324 Quad op-amp, and one more Dual op-amp from the
same family, to save space?
Then you would end up with a row of drivers and then a row of the other coils
D D D D D D
O O O O O O
like that, each with their own circuit to drive each pair of driver and coil, which would/SHOULD allow polyphonic string feedbackage
My OTHER thought, because PSW experimented with this already and mentioned the problem of once you bend the string, you move it out of the magnetic field, is 2 options
1. Maybe putting the assembly closer to the bridge where string bending won't be as extreme as it would be, if the units were placed near the neck....OR
2. instead of going with ROUND drivers and Coils, try Rectangular ones that "overlap" like this:
Drivers and string number:
.1..2..3..4..5..6
___ ___ ___
... ___ ___ ___
___ ___ ___
... ___ ___ ___
Same with the coils (Ignore the periods, I'm just using them to show the offset of the coils, the BB formats the stuff so they line up)
So, the elongated coils and drivers that overlap will maybe keep the string ringing. now PSW you've also done quite a bit of research in the magnetism area, and I can't
honestly say, if overlapping the drivers and coils would interfere with each other horribly or not, but maybe if they are staggered about .5 inches it might help?
If someone would like to let me know if this branch is feasible by all means let me know, if anyone wants to completely blow it out of the water, well, again, let me know.
I just feel there's an approachable solution to the (obviously unmarketable) device because EBOW already has it patented, and I honestly don't see
why something like this couldn't be implemented.
Power-wise I'm not sure, seeing as I use a Roland GK3 I've been hoping I could just tap off the 7 volts coming from that.
(This would probably be easiest to implement on a guitar with a pickguard and the "Swimming pool" pickup routing)