Commercialized Nutziness

[haydukej]

I would guess a fair amount of our members peruse Premier G's site regularly, but thought I'd share this article for those that don't or might have missed this article. It highlights the work of BilT Guitars (Des Moines, IA). Which has made a business out of installing on-board effects, mostly fuzz and delay, into their guitars. Nothing too new when one thinks about it (Zappa's installation of a Green Ringer comes to my mind). Plus, with the exception of routing, I think most here would be comfortable doing this on our own. Their main model is the Relevator pictured below.   



If I didn't love my day job so much (knuck knuck knuck), I would develop a product/system that kept the pedals on the floor, but have "assignable" pots/controls onboard. Seems more logical to me than gutting your fiddle and having to figure out the on-board power supply. Just my 0.02.

[ashcatlt]

Apr 9, 2015 13:35:13 GMT -5 haydukej said:

If I didn't love my day job so much (knuck knuck knuck), I would develop a product/system that kept the pedals on the floor, but have "assignable" pots/controls onboard. Seems more logical to me than gutting your fiddle and having to figure out the on-board power supply. Just my 0.02.

To do that best, you'd prefer not to be sending the actual audio back and forth for each pot, or even set thereof. Ideally, you'd have all of the parameters on the pedals modulated via control voltage one way or another. It's pretty rare that any parameters in a guitar pedal run via CV, so it would require some pretty serious modding of the pedals themselves. I can't see any way that this would be an easy turnkey, off-the-shelf solution. You can generate the CVs on the floor, but you're going to end up with a multi-core cable and multi-pin connectors and...

I personally only have two hands, and have plenty for them to do while playing as is. I'd much rather have expression pedal control, so that I can use one or more of my actually free limbs for any real-time parameter control.

[wolf]

haydukej
If I remember correctly, the VOX guitar company sold electronic guitars in the late 1960's. They'd put all kinds of effects in those guitars - distortion, repeat percussion and lots more that I can't even remember.

By the way, if you want to put your 2 ¢ in, you can always go to this page www.1728.org/altchar.htm
and see how to make all those speçïäl çháràçtérš   

[haydukej]

Ash, thanks for pointing out the logistics of my idea. Looks like I won't have to worry about anyone stealing it anytime soon and it appears another classic case of "architect dreams vs. engineer reality". I agree about adding too many knobs to fiddle with using your hands when the feet are capable. And really, how often does one change delay or fuzz tones in the middle of a song? I'm not saying it never happens, but I would think most have a general setting for a whole song if not a whole set list.

A potential shortcoming I see with the BilT guitars is that there are no reference marking on any of the extra knobs, meaning all of your adjustments would be by ear. Not that that is a bad thing, but not the most practical if looking into this for live performances.

Wolf, thanks for the formatting/special characters lesson. I've visited your site quite a few times in the past. Your blue text does however camouflage the hyperlink to your site. Three more posts to go!

[nikogo]

Haydukej,
I support your desire to take the controls of effects to higher level 
And I suggest an alternative to pushing electronics into guitar. Guitar will not sound better, let's leave some wood there.
Imagine your strap looks like a cartridge belt. But instead of ammunition you keep there your electronics and batteries. 
I have made in my guitars a "cut-in-jack", a 3.5 mm female connector cut into hot wire between filters and volume pot. 
Jack's tip and ring contacts are normally closed/shortened it there is no plug. The tip contact is connected to source (pickup side) and the ring contact is an effect's output connected to the volume pot.
And made the tube screamer plus wah-wah as an attachable to a strap little box.  It has own battery and only one short cable with a plug. 
Such configuration has some advantages:
- distortion is getting unattenuated signal directly from pickups;
- connections are short an that reduces noise;
- the guitar's volume pot controls the output level from effects too;
- the depth of effect can be preadjusted directly on a strap;
- you can replace a device without breaking your guitar; 
- you can completely remove it from a jack while playing if it fails;
- and you don't have to bow.

I do plan to make some effects, like mid boost, as the little insertable plugs.