da_free_runner

lol um......... WOW!!!!

this guitar is lookin awsum man!!

nice work!!

cant wait 2 see it finished

will

haha apologies for mi noobiness, i was very tired when i read this post and i jus skimmed over it

good luck wi the idea, im planning to use this on some of mi next guitars

will

umm.... yeah its jus a standard guitar jack socket for the expression pedal- if a keyboard expression pedal worked on the old ones im guessing its just a pot inside the pedal, right??

thanks

will

ummm ahv u guys seen the EMG site?? emg do the same thing for the connections on their pickups, but they use connectors not unlike the jumpers on computer mainbaords

jus thought i would say

will

just wondering if anyone knows what is inside the optional expression pedal for a zoom 505II effects pedal, i dont have one and i dont want to go and spend money on something i could build miself for less

schematics/ information wud b greatly appreciated

thanks

will

runner:

can you post a bigger pic of the body? or a link.

is that weird line a arm cut or what?

that weird line as u call it, if u mean th line under th bridge, that was a peice of string, it has now been removed

lmao

will

p.s. ile try to get more pics up soon if im not 2 busy

runner:

can you post a bigger pic of the body? or a link.

is that weird line a arm cut or what?

that weird line as u call it, if u mean th line under th bridge, that was a peice of string, it has now been removed

lmao

will

p.s. ile try to get more pics up soon if im not 2 busy

oooofffftttt!!! looking good hooglebug!!

yeah i wud go for the see-through black finsh aswel lol

nice work man!

will

yeah it was hooglebug who made this possible as he gave me pointers 2 where to buy the acrylic and gave me the idea in the first place lol

hohum

thats the body with the neck on, the edges of the acrylic still need trimmed so thats why it look abit weird in places and the big line across the body and under the bridge is string used to keep the acrylic down while glueing it

lol

will

lol the finish is partialy shattered mirrored blue acrylic lol its close to the shape of a hugh manson telecaster although i changed some of the dimensions a bit.

i basically just need to finish the front and spray the back and wired it up and its done lol hoping to have it done for next saturday because im going away that day

any more comments folks?

will

just thought i would post some pics of my guitar im building, its almost finished now but i have been too busy to post anything

see what you think, sorry for not many pics and no description, but im in a hurry so i cant do any more right now

will

just thought i would post some pics of my guitar im building, its almost finished now but i have been too busy to post anything

see what you think, sorry for not many pics and no description, but im in a hurry so i cant do any more right now

will

That is so awsome ! hope you dont mind if i do a version ? I'd really like to try this but mabey with a Kaoss Pad :S i know suicidal lol , do B&Q sell that mirrrored plastic ? yet again Job well done youve really captured the manson image !

i talked to hooglebug and the place you buy it is this online shop http://www.primrose-london.co.uk/acrylic-g...eets-p-608.html

*Note: I wrote this reply just after the Da_free_runner posted, unfortunately, there has been a problem with my forum account, so I couldn't post until now.

I'm not trying to 'shoot you down' DFR, just want to help point out possible issues thay you may not have considered, and also to discover if I am misunderstanding the intention of your design.

haha no problem i wil take any advice i can get, i have only been inverstigating this field of study for a short period of time, and electronics itself for a couple of years, so the more information i can get the better

all the circuit is basically doing is sending a variable pulse to the driver coil so that the guitar strings vibrate.

it will also work better on strings already vibrating so that will maybe cut down on likelyhood of strings starting to vibrate when you dont want them to

Are you sure? Assuming that each pulse is of the same polarity, it will push/pull the string the same way each time... with the string at rest, this will always exite it.

with the string already vibrating at some arbitrary frequency, your circuit is as likely to damp the string as exite it further !

To help see this a good analogy is a swing in a playground... when you puch a child on a swing, you only need to give small pushes, the important thing is that the pushes are exactly synchronised with the natural frequency of the swing... What you are doing would be like sometimes pushing with the existing motion and sometimes against.

i had actually thought about that, i am very hyperactive when workin on this kind of stuff though so i had not looked closely enough at it, thank you for the reminder, i am thinking maybe to design the circuit so it detects the frequency of the string vibrating and adjusts the frequency of the driver pulses to suit, but then there might be a problem where, as the string begins to slow down the circuit would notice and adjust the signal to the driver so the pulses dropped i can see i am going to have fun with this on another point, has anyone thought of using a digital latch type circuit that picks up the output of the pickups and then effectively "latches" the signal to sustain it infinitely (im not sure if it would work, but there is a possibility it would)

i am good at digital electronics so i am trying to create a small digital circuit that works, thats all. the way i see it, all you need to do for sustain is to keep the strings vibrating, if keep them vibrating then you keep the sound going and therfore get sustain,

Thats kind of a simplistic description, you missed a key point - yes it is about keeping the strings vibrating.... but the need to be kept vibrating at their existing frequency. Unfortunately, for your circuit to do this, you would need to manually adjust the frequency to somehow match the frequency of the guitars note. e.g. if your circuit was set to 200hz, and the string was vibrating at 300hz, then the drive circuit will only be in phase (helping) the string every 3rd cycle - so it will spend 2 thirds of the time either interfering with or completely opposing the desired vibration of the string.

I suppose one thing would be to have the driver output short pulses at a much lower frequency - like tremelo picking.... This could work theoretically, although intuition suggests that it would have audible side-effects, and would require a _lot_ of energy behind each pulse...

yet again another point i have found to be true, kind of along the lines of the swing..... as i said above thought, i would be possible to create a circuit that detects the signal frequency and outputs the correct frequency to the driver........

although you cannot get some of the tricks like sustain that automatically gives you the harmonic of the note fretted (like fernandes sustainers) bookread.gif the circuit i have designed gives a few fresh ideas like being able to change the speed and strength of the pulses, effectively giving you a weird kind of volume/decay control

have you tested your system on a guitar ? I would be very interested to hear it working - say, sustaining natural guitar tones on a scale.

I would also be interested to see what you could do with the approach we are trying to develop. You say that you are good at digital electronics... would you be able to develop a simple circuit that could digitise the driver signal and apply more controllable conditioning and AGC in the digital realm before using a class-T amp (or similar) to feed the driver ?

What would be the minimum processing requirements to provide DSP for a usable mono signal? microcontroller? PIC? what would the current drain be like? how big would the circuit be? If you can get a circuit designed, I'd be happy to do the coding - I have plenty assembly language experience, some embedded (kind of) and some audio dsp knowledge.

maybe there are existing off the shelf boards that would make this easy? just load in our custom dsp code and plug it in ?

Col

firstly, no i have not tried it on a guitar yet, simply because i have alot of bugs to work out before i even prepare the pcb for the prototype, and fortunately you have pointed out some finerpoints i had not giving enough thought due to me being an impulsive little bugger and not thinkin enough about side effects

secondly, yes i am good with digital electronics, i have passed my digital electronics at college with merit, although a lot of that was digital logic but i must say that i would NEVER even pretend to be an expert at it!!! i have done some P.I.C. programming as well though, i just need to do a bit more research on this precise field of design and i should be able come up with something that fits the specs req. the processing power you will need depends on what you want exactly you want to do, i would check into that field yourself and research it to decide on to use.

thirdly, you can buy off the shelf boards at relitively cheap prices, just go on google, at my college we imported P.I.C. program/test kits from america although i doubt you would need to go to such extremes to get a decent board.

thank you for your input to my attempts it is much appreciated, and it has been a lot of use in giving me more ideas on a appropriate circuit.

will

hi all,

a friend asked me to look into his 'Stang because it was so noisy and didn't sustain well, didn't sound good in all.

SNIP!

Here are the issues, feel very free to comment if you recognize anything:

SNIP!

(a) grounding: the ground tab on the input jack was unused because supposedly it's ground through the control plate over the jack casings. I think grounding it properly will improve the noise.

dude, first thing i would do to this guitar is wire up that ground tab, i dont trust grounding through the plate, just solder up the grounds to the ground tab on the input jack.

SNIP!

( pickups: it was believe that this one had us strat pickups in it, but according to the view these seem to me to be jap pickups. will try some real ones or custom shops, but... I I'm not mistaken the Mustang is routed to have a strat pickup put upside down! Is that why Stangs cannot have staggered pole piece pu's? maybe I do have a staggered lefty lying around.

SNIP!

if you cant get pickups that fit the cavity, just route out a bit more, there is plenty of space but only take out what you need to

© owner said he always he played with tone and volume on 10. Classic problem: will be installing a treble bleed and lower the stock 0,047uF cap for a 22nF standard. Also will go for the alternative switch wiring scheme which concentrated pickup selection in one switch and kicks out the vol and tone control with the second one.

dono about this one, just do what you think best, you can always experiment

(d) very peculair acoustic problem: I noticed that the strings seem to rest on the screws that adjus the saddles. Intuitively I would say this would kill your tone dead on the spot. But seems inevitable with this setup... Are these the correct screws? Is the bidge on right? This cannot be how it should be. Pic says all SNIP!

hmmm.... this is a weird one, ive never seen this before but i would say that i wouldnt think it would effect the sustain, as the strings are touching the screws BEHIND the bridge dono about the tone though, i would google up about this guitar, you might find pictures of how its meant to look and work from them??

ive probably not been much help but oh well

lol fair enough, just an idea

its probably easier to jus go buy it anyway its its sumthin dat small

I have some capacitors I cannot work out their values, can someone help me please?!

Big orange boiled sweet type...225P 100V 473k

Yellow cylinder...150M .1UF (the M has a strike-through line thru it)

Small ceramic...222K (packet says 2200)

Small ceramic...223Z (packet says 22000)

Tiny ceramic... B 102 (packet says 1000 on it)

Green lozenze type... 2A333J

Excuse my ignorance.

Intended Uses:

1. For tone pot of 2 HB guitar

2. For vol pot treble bleed in parallel with suitable resistor.

Thanks!

lol "big orange boiled sweetie type" 225P if i remember rite means its value is 225 pico-farad, the 100V jus means u cant chuck more than 100 volts thru it without it blowing up (caps do a great blowing up impression)

"yellow cylinder" jus ignore the 150M bit, the important bit is the .1UF, taht means its value is 0.1 micro-farad

i cant remember about ceramic values or the green thingys but if you go on rscomponents.com u shud b able to find out what the values mean, failing that, try google

hope that helps

will

all the circuit is basically doing is sending a variable pulse to the driver coil so that the guitar strings vibrate, it will also work better on strings already vibrating so that will maybe cut down on likelyhood of strings starting to vibrate when you dont want them to i am good at digital electronics so i am trying to create a small digital circuit that works, thats all. the way i see it, all you need to do for sustain is to keep the strings vibrating, if keep them vibrating then you keep the sound going and therfore get sustain, although you cannot get some of the tricks like sustain that automatically gives you the harmonic of the note fretted (like fernandes sustainers) the circuit i have designed gives a few fresh ideas like being able to change the speed and strength of the pulses, effectively giving you a weird kind of volume/decay control

also, i can see what you are saying about maybe being able to play the guitar with a keyboard via a kind of midi setup, you could probably control which strings vibrated if you altered the waveform to a certain frequency, as with on a sitar (is that how you spell it?) which has extra sympathy strings that vibrate in sympathy with the string being plucked (if you pluck a string, the sympathy string for that note begins to vibrate aswell as it is at the same frequency) so it would be possible to create some kind of midi interface if i added some more circuitry, and i will not rule out that idea as a possible sidetrack project after i have perfected my prototype sustainer, as i am very interested in midi after seeing the guitars hugh manson created for matt belamy of muse, some of which incorporate midi controllers including a midi strip and even a x-y pad that can control effects such as the korg kaoss pad

just a thought on the double pot idea, if you have two old pots lying about, you can actually make your own twin pot very easily. i have seen it done in about 10 mins or so. im going to try it just for the crack and see what happens

will

thought i would add this

its not the full circuit as its abit more compicated, but this circuit was tested for my college 2nd year HND project and it works perfectly althought i have not used this circuit in my final design.

the pot by the 555 timer controls the speed of the pulses the timer gives off, the pot above the opamp controls the size of the pulses giving you full control of the square wave output meaning you can actually create a sustain and then use a pot on the guitar to make it gradually decay and then maybe build up again the box marked latch is basically a switch that grounds the signal going through the transistor so cutting the sustain, which means you can turn the sustain unit on by a switch or a pull/push pot, that could also at the same time turn the power to the circuit on and off, the amplified pulses drive the driver coil causing it to vibrate the strings this does work, it has been TRIED AND TESTED just not with guitar strings neway fingers crossed i hope to have this circuit debugged and even built by the end of wednesday

yes i hav tried a few of these ideas before, without too much success, i need a very powerful amp to get anything, i thought i would give some of these ideas on the forum a shot anyway to see if i could modify them to suit. i have been talking to one of my tutors at college about this idea and e suggested i modify a humbucker so one coil is the driver and the other a single coil, we have created mockup diagrams for a small circuit that will run off a 9v battery and i am currently working to iron out some glitches on it, it is based around i 555 timer chip and i have built and simulated the cicuit in a virtual enviroment with promising results, i will post diagrams when we have sorted the glitches, but i think it may interest some people on this thread as it allows you to shape the signal that goes to the driver coil to create more varied sustain effects.

will

lol wel taht didnt work, the peizo doesnt generate enough sound to feedback the pup, im now trying a cheapo wen chuang speaker i found thats only about and inch across and very thin, it seems to work alot better already but i havnt fitted it into the guitar yet so wiat and see

jus been reading this post, s*** its long!!!! another idea i am working on is a microphonic sustainer actually modded INSIDE a humbucker. im using a tiny peizo speaker fitted in the middle of underneath the coils and it is barely noticeable. i cant wait to see if it will work, i just need to build a little amp circuit for it the will go sumwhere ile let u no how it goes