Robert_the_damned

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone here knows the minimum spacing between front and rear posts that one of the T-o-M replacement bridges will fit? I'm contemplating fitting one to an Ibanez guitar I have that has the tail piece mounted really close to the bridge (about 38mm) and I know the recommended distance is larger than this but the kahlers have some amount of adjustment?

I tried emailing Kahler directly and got no reply unfortunately.

As far as I can remember you'll need to format the drive to HFS+ for use with protools. I think you also need to tell protools that its ok to record to it somehow, I'm not sure how you do this (trying to get my friend to explain this in the pub last night probably wasn't the best idea ).

Well I'm certain that the first part is feasible, you could defenatly do what you wanted with the bass jack switching the low strings. Having that and each string giving a sepearate output though isn't going to be so easy, you'd probably have to go into having some op-amp buffers in there to do that. Though at least if you're running it down to a box you could have the power comming in on the cable. Yes I'd say all of that was possible it just depends on how complicated you want to make things.

and surely an 8 string pickup with individual elements is an Octophonic pickup?

Yup you've basicly found what you need to do: you can't work straight onto the system HD. Infact I'd advise getting a firewire harddrive as if you're trying to record more than a few channels at once you need the higher data transfer rate.

Pro Tools is really nice and can get some cool sounds but in my experiance can be such a pain in the arse if it wants to be.

You should be able to partition your external harddrive and have one partition for your windows OS and the other for Mac. Don't know how to do this on a Mac though I'm affraid.

Hi all,

I've recently been upgrading electronics wise to get a better sound. I'm using a whole load of stomp boxes going into a marshall stereo power amp (only the 20/20 but its loud enough for recording and band practice). Now I've hit a bit of a problem in that because I'm using so many stop boxes I need basicly something that will switch them all in at the same time. I know of the Boss Line Selector but the problem is that all my stomp boxes are going to be mounted in my rack case with my power amp, so either I'll have to go up to my amp to change sounds or open up the line selector and add an extra jack for remote swtiching (which is the current plan).

Ok so now I'm finnaly getting to the point of my thread: is there something out there that will do what I want? it needs to be able to switch between two seperate loops of effects and needs to be able to have a remote footswitch option.

I could build one, the electronics would be soooo easy but I don't have a single power tool or drill bit over about 4mm with me so building an enclosure would be impossible.

Oh and to top it off its got to be cheap, at least cheaper than the Line selector!

Rob.

I have one in the neck of a les paul.

The pickup itself does contain a decent P90 sound, and a good HB sound and a passable single coil tone.

BUT

yup you saw that comming I bet, you can't get all three at the same time. To get the best single coil sound you need the pickup close to the strings, so close that the P90 sounds really bad. The P90 needs it quite a distance away which completely ruins the single coil tone. So you have to compromise.

Personally I think the magenets for the blade pickup might be too weak in comparision to the two whacking great magenets I'm guessing are stuck either side of the P90 bobbin.

I have mine set up so I get a good P90 sound and still have a good HB tone. I'm not to fussed about the single coil but it sounds ok to me, not great, not as good as the P90, but ok.

wow that looks awesome Matt. The body shape is just right.

I can see what you're saying about the headstock, I think you could leave it as it is so long as it doesn't bother you. Personally I'd paint it black. A veneer would look good too, maybe mirroring the body with purpleheart/whatever the brown wood is/purpleheart.

Sounds to me in the clip that strings are actually muted in the more banjo-like sounds. Seems like this could be achieved by working the sustainers out of phase with the string vibration.

hmm that'd be interesting.....an anti-sustainer. I can see that being pretty useful in some situations actually, especially if you're trying to do something very fast and get a lot of defenition on it.

even then I don't trust he's not photoshoped it.

I think Matt should have to post me the gutiar to check its actually finnished

sounds like a challenge to me!

don't have time at the moment but I'll do it tomorrow!

If you don't mind replacing your original selector with a mega-switch it should be quite easy to get the same swtiching as the original diagram with a standard push pull (haven't traced it out yet but it should be do-able).

All the envelope filter technology is a little old hat and can be done in many ways outside of the guitar, building it inside is a little overkill.

I was thinking that too, hell my cheepo Korg Ampworks' evelope filter sounds nearly as good (can't much go wrong with designing an envelope filter!).

For the sustainer, I am not sure how far they have taken it. It is the same basic sustainer idea with harmonic modes. If the thing will work with either pickup or both is not clearly shown. The piezo bridge is most likely used to sense the string vibrations individually in "controlled mode" so that it runs the appropriate driver in a HEX system (like I had been building 4 years ago!) and was proposed in the ebow patent in the 60's. Basically six ebows but using the piezo hex system to sense the strings in use. I suspect then that the controlled mode might not work with the piezos. Again, not enough detail of the functions.

You can get a muting "anti-sustainer" effect, but generally in my experiments this has come about when I least wanted it! Still, pretty cool banjo like effect with the mute mode on (bit like the old mute felt thing that Leo came up with...hehehehe).

I was think hexaphonic too, possibly with some sort of canceling system so that the drivers either side of one driving a string help cancel out the EM field so it doesn't start trying to vibrate the strings next to the string its ment to be vibrating, would take some quite cleaver engineering as you'd then have to cancel this canceling field with the next driver along and so on.

The guitar would draw a fair amount of power, so I suspect they have a remote power source like the line6.

In the video it looked like there was a power supply going into the expression pedal, it may be that the power then runs up the cord to the guitar from that.

*EDIT* having just looked at the specs on their site it is indeed powered from the foot pedal

All in all I think that's a pretty impressive guitar, not sure I'd rush out and buy one as its not exactly something I can see myself using in any of the music I play but defenatly a very clever technical feat.

umm ok Im on a pc at the shop but I cant upload pics on it with out a cam up here, I could try my cell phone but they will really suck

and while on beards In trying something new myself, a goat!! not sure on it yet

get some pictures guy!

We all know I like goats.

can you really post that on a family based forum?

I am so hot I burn up 3 pairs of underwear a week.

you really should try wearing 7 pairs a week

+1 to that

Hehe...I have some pics from when I was your age I will try to scan and post sometime this weekend..But I warn you,the beautiful hair was a sight to behold!

probably should stop clogging up Matt's thread and take it to the OT forum I'll let a mod get angry first!

That beard is WACK...

I have a beard now too...but it actually has a few hairs in it.

I donno if I should be insulted or not.......no seriously what're you on about you gorgeous metal god!!! ( )

Butbutbut.... your avatar is so babyfaced I can't picture it with a full-on beard!

Avatar updated!

Somehow Matt is posting to the board without a PC too.

maybe he's built himself a Wi-Fi guitar and is playing his messages directly into the internet!

dear lord I think I've fallen into a parallel universe where Matt has nearly finnished something!!! DUN DUN DAHHHH!!!

sorry for that couldn't help myself

ooo actually this may be a parallel universe I now have a beard since last time I was active on these boards *creeps himself out*

That Purpleheart-8string-superstrat looks amazing. The shape is just spot on, it looks metal but in a subtle way.

Looking forward to some sound clips, bet it sounds better than it looks (ment in a good way!) I think I'll leave it there before you come and crush me.

If you're building from scratch I think something along the lines of an AM system is going to be much much better than using networking protocals, for a start there are a LOT of devices working on those frequencies and you'd have to have to rig some way of obtaining a link only with your reciver (don't want to be picking up your guitar on your PC or vice-versa). An AM modulator / demodulator shouldn't be to difficult to build, powering a decent transmitter off of 9V batteries might be interesting though, guess it doesn't have to go far.

For installation purposes you're probably talking about routing a new cavity in your guitar to fit the radio board in (you probably wouldn't want it inside your sheilded electronics cavity anyway ).

FM will of course be clearer but I doubt you'd be able to tell the differance (so long as you've not got something nearby producing huge amounts of EMI on your frequency). You would be able to get away with much less compression on an FM circuit though I suppose, it'd require a much more complicated circuit though, still easier than doing it digitally IMHO. However if you do want to do it digitally you might as well use a PIC and do it all through programing, much easier than implementing something with discreate components.

I don't even think 802.11.x is good for networking!

To use a Piezo and standard magnetic pickups together you will need a pre-amp. Stew Mac does the LR Baggs pre-amp to go with that bridge so that'd be a good bet to start with. The manual for that is on the LR Baggs site its writen out for installing on a strat but it'd be simple enough to work it out for a differant layout (I can help if you're not an electronics guy).

.......huh. Well, interesting developments in my predicament. For kicks, I disconnected the killswitch from the equation to see what I got.

Well, the hum is still there, but here's the thing. It gets quieter when I touch the tuners, bridge, strings and such. It gets LOUDER when I touch any electronics. Knobs, switch screws, and the washer around the killswitch. Even though the killswitch isn't connected. O_o

My dad and I are utterly stumped.

Sounds like there's something wrong with your grounding, sounds to me like your bridge is grounded properly (which is why the noise reduces when you touch it or anything connected to it) but it sounds like something is up with your grounding on the electronics, when you're touching the knobs its causing background noise to be sent into your signal ('cos people make pretty good antena really), so they must be seperated from the ground somehow, which seems very odd seeing as you're star grounding everything. Makes you wish you made an acoustic huh?

My advice would be to re-do the whole lot (disconnect everything and do it all again), a complete pain in the ass I know but that way you should find where your dodgy connection is.

You say your control cavity is small so try and wire up everything you can outside the cavity then drop it in and attach anything else (probably just the bridge ground and the pickups).

ah yes my V is just an 81 and a vol pot

If you happen to find that article I'd be interested in having a look at it, I've got an oscilascope and some caps and pots so it wouldn't take much for me to do the experiment for myself.

sorry for double posting guys!

Some experiments were done some results included as far as frequency transmission. You are correct, ground is ground, but what happens between device and ground is more what I was referencing. Not sure it's such a far fetched idea as I keep getting guitars brought in for pickup replacement that have the cap from lug on v to lug on t. This does not create a grounded circuit - until the same lug on v is jumped to the case of the pot. Theoretically, this could have a potentially different effect than connecting the pots via wire.

I apologize if this created/caused any concern.

No concern at all, just that the cap in the Stew Mac diagram is connected from the lug on the tone pot to the lug on the volume pot which is then connected to the star ground, meaning that the 'volume' end of the cap is grounded. Hence why wiring it this way shouldn't make any differance.

I never use my tone pot in anycase so it matters little!

-When grounding the bare and green wire, I wrapped them in electrical tape and grounded them as one wire. Yay or nay?

soldier them then put tape on would be my advice, tape can and will work loose over time and then you'll loose the connection.

-There's no bridge ground...

I forgot that woops! (you can tell I've not done these for a while eh?)

-Why isn't the hot of the volume attached to the center lug?

because I wasn't paying attention obviously oh boy does this diagram suck (note to self must try harder )

-Is the hot wire T-junction at the tone pot crucial, or can I run it through the lug like the volume pot?

either way is fine, so long as everything is connected it doesn't really matter to much as to how its connected.

The diagram seems simple enough, if switching the hot and ground doesn't solve the problem. I don't want to burn out the little killswitch with too much heat/repeated soldering though. Such fragile little Radio Shack switches

so long as you don't start melting the casing (when stuff inside will probably start moving) it should be fine.

New (hopefully correct rather than a load of "£$*&^ diagram)

To confuse things futher I thought I'd do you a wiring diagram. Hopefully this will clear things up, I've used the back of the volume pot as the main grounding point then chained the ground along the other components (this cuts down the number of wires in your control cavity). My suggestion would be to take out all the wiring and start again completely from scratch. Follow one of the diagrams and mark each wire as you soldier it in place.

+++ BAD DIAGRAM DELETED NEW ONE ON ITS WAY+++

All the wires from the humbucker are the correct colour code, other wires have been done in differant colours just to make things clear. Wires crossing eachother don't join wires only join on lugs of components.

By the sounds of it you may have got your ground and signal mixed up on the output jack, you will get a lot of noise that way!

there is some evidence that placing them between the pots, as opposed to just connecting on the tone will create more consistent tone at all levels of volume

As I'm doing a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering I'd like to see that 'evidence' connecting to ground is connecting to ground.

Nice Bass, always liked Thunderbird basses myself, nice looking colour you've got on it too.

With regards to LEDs I'm going to have to spoil things and link to this thread which has one of the coolest LED necks ever......just watch the video and you'll see!