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Post by nowhereismyhome on Nov 15, 2005 13:43:54 GMT -5
Hey, I've modded a few pedals but am no expert at custom modification and I had a question concerning pedals. Is it possible, in theory, to take an effects pedal circuit board out of its case and build it into the body of a guitar? I realize that some major work would have to be done to body to make room...Does anyone know if this has been done? Can the pedal then be activated or deactivated with a switch or knob? Any advice is MUCH appreciated.
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Post by UnklMickey on Nov 15, 2005 15:52:28 GMT -5
yes
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Post by JohnH on Nov 15, 2005 16:01:48 GMT -5
I am working on one at the moment, which will be a clean buffer plus soft and hard overdrive. GFS have some neat looking ready made circuits to build in. My inclination is to dream up my own, but thats just because I like doing that. The key points for me are to make it very small, to configure the controls in a way that make sense in a built-in, and also to keep power consumption very low. I am looking to get mine to run at about 0.3mA current, which I think will give me about 1000 hours from a 9V battery. Many commeercial boxes I believe use several mA (although I have not measured one), which is no problem with a power adaptor but would give much less battery life.
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Post by UnklMickey on Nov 15, 2005 16:03:44 GMT -5
okay mike r. how'd i do? _________________________________________ nowhere is my home, (or is it "now here is my home"? it's ambiguous in a sorta cool way.) you would need to be very careful to keep track of which wires go where on the original controls and switches. and replace them as necessary - obviously you want a push-pull pot or a mini-toggle to engage the effect. a stomp switch would be silly on the guitar. but you already knew that. the other thought, is that you can only use that effect with that guitar. so if you really like that effect, you'll need to get another one to use with your other guitars. i wonder, given the hurdles you'll have to jump to work it into a guitar, if it's really worth it?
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Post by nowhereismyhome on Nov 15, 2005 16:07:58 GMT -5
Actually, the info is for my Dad. He plays but he's no good technical stuff, but he had this idea of putting the guts of his Klon Centaur into his ultra nice 64 Gibson SG (not a reissue). Favorite pedal, favorite guitar. Problem is, the Klon is HUGE, which would make it more difficult. I've seen some of those kits that take over a Tone knob on a Strat and make a multi effects knobs, but who knows if the quality of the effects is any good? He's a tone freak, like myself, and quality is jsut as important as convenience. However, if an in-guitar pedal installation could be done, I'd love to take it on as a project. Do you have any experience with those Tone pot efects knobs?
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Post by JohnH on Nov 15, 2005 16:11:54 GMT -5
I have not tried one of those GFS circuits. But the bigger point is - I would really not want to mess with a genuine '64 SG. Its a fun idea with some clone guitar, but not with an original and valuable vintage instrument
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Post by nowhereismyhome on Nov 15, 2005 17:12:06 GMT -5
Yeah, that's a good call. Even scratching a 64 SG would be scandalous. Well, I have a 91 Mexi Strat that's all souped up that I would love to f k with, so the project is still on. I've heard of people hollowing out their strats (behind the pickups) and then covering the hole with a pick guard. It seems to me that you could put the pedal board there, but I don't know how that would affect the pedals. Any and all advice on soldering effects directly into guitars is welcome.
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Post by UnklMickey on Nov 15, 2005 17:44:47 GMT -5
Yeah, that's a good call. Even scratching a 64 SG would be scandalous... not to mention the fact that if you hacked it, you'd probably have terry kath's ghost haunting you for the rest of your life. (unless you could fit a bogen pa amp in there as a pre-amp...)
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Post by nowhereismyhome on Nov 15, 2005 18:12:36 GMT -5
Any suggestions for replacement pickups on a '91 Mexi Strat? I think I'm going to add a Black Ice Overdrive circuit to my mexi strat, but I figured I should change the pickups too. I hear Lindy Fralin has the best pickups, but who can decide? Do I need the absolute best on the market? Any cheaper-but-still-good suggestions?
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Post by Runewalker on Nov 15, 2005 23:03:30 GMT -5
NowhereMan: I've heard of people hollowing out their strats (behind the pickups) and then covering the hole with a pick guard. It seems to me that you could put the pedal board there, but I don't know how that would affect the pedals. Since most people wear shoes when actuating a petal, you may have to wear leather gloves to actuate it with your hand onboard the guitar. Won't the glove impede your picking technique? RW
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johnnyboy
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If it's too loud, you're too old!!!
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Post by johnnyboy on Nov 16, 2005 3:46:37 GMT -5
Its not that so much as having to put the guitar down and step on it each time you want to turn the effect on or off.
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Post by GuyaGuy on Nov 16, 2005 22:18:16 GMT -5
Hey, I've modded a few pedals but am no expert at custom modification and I had a question concerning pedals. Is it possible, in theory, to take an effects pedal circuit board out of its case and build it into the body of a guitar? I realize that some major work would have to be done to body to make room...Does anyone know if this has been done? Can the pedal then be activated or deactivated with a switch or knob? Any advice is MUCH appreciated. this was done by Vox in the 60s. in the early 80s Electra had an MPC line which featured effect modules you can plug in and control on board. in the late 90s danelectro had the hoddad series of guitrs featuring built-in effects.
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Post by JohnH on Nov 17, 2005 3:38:51 GMT -5
I think I'm going to add a Black Ice Overdrive circuit to my mexi strat, The Black Ice is a relatively expensive item at around $30, considering that it is just a passive device, comprising two Schottky diodes in a plastic block. It is no substitute for an active circuit. I have experimented with these diodes and I quite like the effect, but they are only worth about 50c each. I like the effect of one diode, wired in place of a tone capacitor. The Black Ice has two, wired parallel back-to-back. I used type 1N5819. You can get them at any good electronics supplier. They work better than normal diodes in this amplication because they clip at a much lower level, within range of unamplified guitar signals. You have to play hard however for best effects, but I then find that their non-linear response extends right through the decay phase, which I did not expect. It adds a little grit to your sound, but it is not a proper overdrive. But put some active amplification before the Schottkys and it is a different story. That is the basis of the circuit I am designing.
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Post by nowhereismyhome on Nov 17, 2005 12:44:53 GMT -5
Ok, well I've now checked out many, many more on-board guitar effect devices and I've realized that before I want to start worrying about on-board effects, I want to change out the pickups on my Mexi Strat (the guitar I want to start adding effects to). The problem is, there are about a thousand different brands and subtypes within those brands of single coil pickups. Here's what I want in terms of sound. 1) I want crispness and clarity (maybe this is an amp issue) 2) I don't like the muddy, mid-heavy sound. I want my leads to pierce and my chords to have a good low and mid end 3) I like overdrive more than distortion, and I'd like my guitar to have a good, clean sound that would work well with a modded TS-5 tube-screamer.
Ok, I know I'm going out on a limb here, but does anyone have any advice on pickups I should try? Brands, types within those brands, even general types of single coils? I know NOTHING about pickups, besides the difference between a humbucker and a single coil. Help me out here. Thanks.
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Post by Mini-Strat_Maine on Dec 6, 2005 15:31:57 GMT -5
In Googling around for something else today, I came across a thread on the original GN Forum that included this: "MPC were a line of guitars by Electra (sold by Saint Louis Music of Crate fame, and made by Matsumoku, one of the best of the vintage japanese guitar makers). Their main claim to fame was onboard effect units- plug-in overdrive, phasers, flangers, etc. But they also had a rotary switch for selecting series, paralel, and phase effects rather than just a typical 3-way selector switch." There were two links with that, both referring to Electraman's site, but the site appears to have "gone 404 bye-byes." Maybe you can dig up some more info on the MPC brand, if you're still interested in the concept.
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x189player
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Post by x189player on Dec 12, 2005 0:28:14 GMT -5
I posted that Yep, Electraman's pages are down but we are in the process of getting them back up again. In the meantime you can get more info at the excellent Guitar Gallery forum for Matsumoku-made guitars- www.matsumoku.org/ggboard/www.matsumoku.org/ggboard/viewforum.php?f=15in general, they are excellent guitars. If you can think of a situation in which you'd want to be able to plug a guitar straight into an amp and carry the effects onboard, cool. The downside? Well, how often do you really need to do that? And the other limitation is that the MPC effects were great by 1979 standards, but just OK today. Well, pretty good actually. But by installing the effects onboard you do give up the option of upgrading to the latest greatest thing next year. here's my 1978 Electra X910 (Explorer clone) The four knobs are volume, tone, and effect level for each of the two effects switched on by the toggles. One thing the MPC guitars did is get the effects dialed in to some really useful setting ranges.
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Post by plugfromparis on Jan 31, 2007 18:23:27 GMT -5
Hi there, I'm brand new here, and an absolute beginner as far as electronics goes... My problem is : I bought a Danoblaster (aka Hearsay or Innuendo, there are several names and versions), which is a guitar with built in effects (distortion in my case). Its components were a bit tired so I gave it to a repair shop... but the guys didn't understand the "poetry" of this special guitar, and now it doesn't work. I badly need a wiring diagram to fix things up... I suspect that it's wired the same as some standard Danelectro distortion pedal... You experts must know something about it??? Actually I LOVED the sound of this built in effect, even though I heard it only briefly... Thx, regards from Paris Didier, aka plug
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Post by ChrisK on Jan 31, 2007 18:54:00 GMT -5
I have a 340 Electra and a few of the effects modules. It is the most resonant LP style guitar that I've played. It's also the only LP style guitar that I've bothered to own. These images were from the (probably Electraman's) Electra site.
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Post by vonFrenchie on Jan 31, 2007 19:01:11 GMT -5
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Post by vonFrenchie on Jan 31, 2007 19:13:59 GMT -5
I like the effect of one diode, wired in place of a tone capacitor. The Black Ice has two, wired parallel back-to-back. I used type 1N5819. You can get them at any good electronics supplier. How would you wire that up exactly? I have some 1N914A diodes (8 or 9 of em) and I have no use for them (or my bridge pickup's volume since i usually have my pickups in series) I was planning on converting the volume pot into a pot with a black ice or some circuit from GFS. I wasnt going to use a black ice (too expensive) and I dont like the idea of having batteries in my guitar for one little circuit that I would have on every once and a while so that leaves me with diodes..
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Post by UnklMickey on Jan 31, 2007 19:19:57 GMT -5
hey vF,
you can hit the modify button instead of quote.
that will allow you to add or change text in your original post, without making a new copy.
...................you can also delete a post if you want to.
EDIT:
oops i see you already did!
[latella mode] .............never mind.[/latella mode]
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Post by vonFrenchie on Jan 31, 2007 19:23:10 GMT -5
I thought I hit modify... I guess I didnt.
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Post by JohnH on Feb 1, 2007 15:03:31 GMT -5
I like the effect of one diode, wired in place of a tone capacitor. The Black Ice has two, wired parallel back-to-back. I used type 1N5819. You can get them at any good electronics supplier. How would you wire that up exactly? I have some 1N914A diodes (8 or 9 of em) and I have no use for them (or my bridge pickup's volume since i usually have my pickups in series) I was planning on converting the volume pot into a pot with a black ice or some circuit from GFS. I wasnt going to use a black ice (too expensive) and I dont like the idea of having batteries in my guitar for one little circuit that I would have on every once and a while so that leaves me with diodes.. Hi Vonfrenchie - Thats a rather old post of mine. Those 1N914's are no good for this, being normal silicon diodes. The ones I used were Schotky diodes, which clip at a much lower level (ie more within the range of guitar output), plus, just as significantly, they have rather low forwards resistance through their whole voltage range, which measn they add dirt not just to peak sounds, but all the way through the decay. You wire them just like a tone capacitor, to a pot, one diode, or two in parallel in opposite directions. That being said - I found it a rather dry sound, and wanting more gain, added transistors and then JFETs. THen I found the JFETs made a much better sound when overdriven than the diodes. then it got more complicated, and then too complicated for inside a guitar, and much better in a stomp box. So my one diode from 2005 is now a seperate overdrive box with several JFET's, which I am very pleased with, making some nice tube sounds. John
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Post by CheshireCat on Feb 11, 2007 3:30:02 GMT -5
I was thinking of guitar effects the other day and thought, hey what if the trem arm was attached to a potentiometer, like in a wah-wah pedal, placed behind the bridge so that the guitaur had a built in wah-wah ability? thinking: trem-style bar attached by a swivel mount to an axle in the guitar, connected by gear to a 100k ohm. pot. connected by wire to an on/bypass switch going to the guitar's output plug. so heres the point, has anyone seen this done or have an opinion on this working/not working and/or being worth-while. any comments would be appreciated. Well, first off, the key to getting it to work is just to get it to work. There really isn't anything that you can't do, assuming that you want to spend the time and money to do it. That said, remember, something like this will take a lot of designing, a lot of trial, and a lot of error, yadda yadda yadda, and that all will take a lot of money and resources. Nothing wrong with that if you want to pursue this, but just be ready to do so. As far as practicality goes, there are a few things to consider: First, just how much wah do you think you'll be using? You'd better be a total wah-nut if you plan to undertake this project. This reminds me of a guy who put a spring reverb in a Strat, basically co-opting and recasting the vibrato springs as reverb springs, additionally making the back-rout a lot longer, and the vibrato bridge obviously no longer being functional. Now, that ended up being a very big and rather clunky project, and wasn't pretty to say the least, but it ultimately worked out for him because everything was "under the hood" as it were. It also proved rather practical for him because he played Surf music all the time. He might as well have been D!ck Dale. There was nary a tune that he wasn't using reverb on, so it made all the sense in the world to have that available to him 24/7. So, unless you have a situation like that where you always use wah all the time, I'm not sure how practical it will be. See, I'm not really a very big fan of having any effects onboard, mainly for the abovementioned reason. I think, with rare exception, effects don't belong on a guitar but on a floor rack. Now, in case you fear me a one pup/one vol pot purist, this is what my guitar looks like, and I'm only half-way thru: I actually have a few more switches in the mix that aren't pictured (believe it or not). And, in the interest of full disclosure, I'll technically have somewhere between 5-8 onboard effects by the time I'm done, but I don't consider them to be in violation of my stance that one should avoid onboard effects. Here's why: to my way of thinking, the main purpose of the equipment on the guitar (onboard) should be for tone generation; everything after that (offboard) should be for modifying the tone. To that end, the would-be "effects" really aren't effects. (Ironically, this includes a would-be wah effect, created by manipulating the midrange sweep on my EMG-VMC. Neat effect I discovered whilst tweeking the midrange. However, I wouldn't use that in a concert setting and I get a lot more mileage out of my wah pedal.) So, these "effects" aren't effects in the proper sense, save one (listed at the end), and principly work for tone generation: sustainiac - creates bowed effects and can't be done offboard and must be done onboard, which it's designed for; octave divider - not done as an octavia effect but rather as a method of creating an extended range instrument; wah - see above; EQ - technically not an effect. The only onboard effect that will be used as an onboard will be the alluded-to Artec QDD2, which has 4 different distortion/overdrive effects. Now, the reason why I am going to use that one is because it's the equivalent of having four distortion pedals in one, all available with the flick of a switch, and it takes up one cubic inch of space and has 4K hours of battery life on one 9-volt. In short, it was just too good to pass up. That's the only exception to the rule. (The proverbial exception to the rule that proves the rule.) Now everything that I've listed above are all small units that have a very low drain on battery life. They are also very discrete and non-obtrusive. Very low-maintenance. Those are the hallmarks of any worthwhile guitar component. However, that isn't always the case with effects. More often than not the various effects in question (wah, echo, reverb, chorus) are usually very involved, and require lots of space to function, and can be bugger hard trying to cram into a guitar. (And believe me, I'm someone who knows.) Which brings up the second concern . . .what technology and method of construction will you be using? If it's basic breadboard construction, then you might be in for an ordeal. Case in point: think of your typical wah pedal. That's a pretty big pedal! Lots of real estate to contend with. If you were using SMT (surface mount technology), that's much more practical and doable, but now you need to have it fabricated. That can be done, but you'll pay a pretty penny for it. Third, what are you willing to give up for it? If you are going to try and cram a crybaby into your guitar, that will preclude a lot of things from going in. What are you willing to give up for that? Are you even willing to make this one guitar your dedicated wah guitar? And, if so, how do you transition to it whenever you want to use wah? Only use it for wah songs? Restrain yourself from any wah unless you know you'll be using this particular guitar for a certain set of songs? I'm not in any way dissuading you from wanting to take this on. It's sounds fascinating and exciting. But these are questions you get to ask yourself in the due-dilligence process. Just some things to consider. Chesh
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Post by dunkelfalke on Feb 11, 2007 7:20:40 GMT -5
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Post by ChrisK on Feb 11, 2007 20:03:01 GMT -5
Uh, I thought that springy-thingy in the back of a Strat WAS a reverb!
(You know, the Strat is a semi-acoustic guitar turned inside-out.)
Since that knobulicious thing appears to be made out of oak, I guess that it is a true PLANK.
(Has yer wife noticed the missing kitchen cabinet door yet?)
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Post by vonFrenchie on Feb 12, 2007 21:16:17 GMT -5
About the built in wah. This is from that same guitar I showed you above. That copper plate on the bottom right is actually the transmitter of a Zvex Probe Wah. Its this really cool pedal that uses RF modulation to control the wah sound based on how far away a hand, foot, arm, leg, face, metal object, wet object, etc. is from the copper plate. If there is nothing within transmittable range the wah it in a pseudo bypass. Of course it can be truely bypassed for when you dont need it. Also that black strip is a MIDI controller. Based on what youre telling the MIDI console to do (thats inside the guitar) you can control it with the MIDI controller. Think of it as a digitech whammy built into this guy's guitar. If you want this stuff.... fork over 5000 dollars. But you can easily modify a Les Paul or other "bulky" guitar to put in a Zvex probe. I'd just put a small copper plate (maybe even the one that comes with the wah probe) where the three way switch is and then wire the plate to the probe. By button I mean a copper rivet. zvex.com/effects.htmlThats my take on the whole built in wah thing. Gears, pulleys and such are iffy. Gears can rust, come loose, wear away. Im sure you can do it successfully but I would seriously think about what will happen to the guitar 5, 10, 20 years down the road and mod it to fit that. Also, Chesh... I always have spring reverb on. My Peavey Musician has a really nice reverb but doesnt have a bypass on it so I just leave it on. I have it set for a really nice and unobtrusive effect.
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Post by guitardoode on Feb 18, 2007 10:30:35 GMT -5
That wah effect has to be one of the most impressive things ive ever seen!
Does anyone remember those things from the 90s which had two tuned Ariels and when u passed your hand between them it would wail and squeal?
I would love to have/build one of them =-)
But back on subject! Wouldn't modding your guitars body to add effects mean new cavities therefore a difference in the guitar body's overall resination ?
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Post by spitfire23bc on Feb 18, 2007 10:51:28 GMT -5
Does anyone remember those things from the 90s which had two tuned Ariels and when u passed your hand between them it would wail and squeal? I would love to have/build one of them =-) One of these? This site has pretty a pretty detailed explanation of it, and a circuit diagram of one (scroll down to "Theremin"). It is very tempting to have a go at making one
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