Alright, I have been working on this project since I found this thread last year. My original drivers lacked the power I needed, but my 386 circuit was pumping out the juice. Now I have a good driver, but I cannot get any of my 386 circuits to produce enough power. My first "Ruby" amp that I built is LOUD but my other circuits drive a speaker at less than half the volume than the Ruby. I have built many 386 amp variations to try get this sucker to work but I cannot coax the power out of these chips.
I also salvaged and installed a preamp from an oven control panel and installed it under the neck pickup, then built a preamp so I could use the piezo as the sustainer pickup. The main problem I found is that it really likes to sustain its own resonant frequencies.
Anyways, I thought I would contribute by sharing my driver design. I could get it working in harmonic mode with one of my circuits that had barely any output at all, so I'm pretty sure this thing is working better than expected. All I did was raise the poles on my middle pickup and make a ciol from the pole ends. After coiling I slipped the cover over it and reinstalled the pickup. My main concern was fitting all that wire on top while leaving the poles far enough down to contact the magnets at the bottom of the pickup.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/big_thurs/al...m/ph//my_photos
