Wiring a 9v VU Meter to a guitar

[miguitars]

Hi,

Ive just built a little 9v VU LED kit hoping that i would be able to put the lights in a guitar.

It works real well. The harder I play the more leds come on etc. (Like sims custom ones) I was planning on replacing the normal green leds with superbright ones etc.

The only problem is the circuit creates slight crackeling and also slightly distorts the signal.

Ive wired it up to the output jack of the guitar. + to + and neg to neg.

Does anyone have any ideas how to fix the problem?

I do have a hard copy of the circuit diagram if any of that information would help..

I'd love to sort this out seeing as the kit only cost me $15au... (much cheaper than sims!)

Regards

Mark

[bam]

My only thought is, splitting your signal into two and feed one of the splitted signals into the VU.
But it seems that it would color the tone, though.