I don't want to thread jack the discussion quoted below so I've started this thread. Please share any handy or weirdo on-board circuits you are thinking about. Here's what I'm thinking about lately:

The past two months I've been interested in DIY field recording things, contact mics and such. Got some supplies, gonna roll some odd units. Definitely going tape some contact mics to a guitar for shenanigans (like a souped up Keith Rowe vibe). But then I started wondering if you could get either the piezo discs or some tiny speakers to feed the guitar audio back into the guitar. Maybe make a teensy preamp. I was mostly thinking this would work by interfering with the pickups to get nasty feedback or whatever.

Around this time my internet searching turned up the "Tornipulator" circuit (see below). And the other day I saw the discussion quoted below which brought up attaching audio exciters to the guitar body for feedback. Super neat.

The videos using the exciter method that I have seen involve using an external amplifier to drive the exciter. I'm thinking there may be some very compact chip based amplifier circuits that could be mounted on board (or in a little project box) that would make this all more manageable.

You'd need to tap the guitar output signal. Would this require buffering? I can't remember. Anyway this signal would go into the amp and from there into the exciter, stimulating the body . . . fripp-out. This would let you add a handy volume know for this circuit to ramp up or down the feedback.

I wonder what the minimum power you'd need to be effective. The video below uses a 50 watt SS Peavey and a not so discrete honker of an exciter. I think you can work up a small 1-5 watt amp in a pretty compact package, like those little smokey amps. Will that be enough? I don't know. Likewise, Dayton Audio makes a whole line of exciters (https://www.daytonaudio.com/category/180/exciters), some of which are quite compact. Will the lil ones be able to sufficiently excite the body? I don't know.

Will on-board circuitry interfere with the pickup's signal? I don't know.

I recently found the body and neck of my old Squier strat from highschool, which had its upgraded parts sold some time ago. I plan to put cheap neck and bridge pickups in it, omitting the middle pickup. This leaves plenty of under-the-hood realestate for experiments.

VaticanShotglass wrote: Fri Aug 20, 2021 10:08 pm

Leeplusplus wrote: Thu Jun 03, 2021 6:02 pm

uglysound wrote: Wed Jun 02, 2021 6:43 am Maybe consider using a surface transducer to make the cello itself the speaker?



They seem to project sound really well, so the filtering wouldn't be as severe but, between transducer and mic placement, there's probably a lot to explore there.

Great idea! Honestly, can't believe I didn't think of one of these. Thanks for the tip, I'll look into them.

If you want to go further with onboard mic/speaker noise, check out the Tornipulator circuit as seen in this jag.

I've always kinda wanted to do the Zappa thing and put a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer in my guitar. I'd seriously consider doing that to a Jaguar's upper rhythm control plate. Easy access. Might be enough room under there for the battery too. Or put a Blue Clipper there.

tommy wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 11:34 am I've always kinda wanted to do the Zappa thing and put a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer in my guitar. I'd seriously consider doing that to a Jaguar's upper rhythm control plate. Easy access. Might be enough room under there for the battery too. Or put a Blue Clipper there.

Get yourself an Electra MPC! You can find existing effect cartridges but if you wanna homebrew it you can build em out of .15" pitched strip board.

My guitar has a Cry Baby wah pedal inside of it. Geoff Benge here in Chicago wired it up to the tone control knob, put a switch next to it and slapped a 9 volt inside. It's pretty cool! It's at 2:25 in this video

*watches thread very closely*

Leeplusplus wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 1:47 pm My guitar has a Cry Baby wah pedal inside of it. Geoff Benge here in Chicago wired it up to the tone control knob, put a switch next to it and slapped a 9 volt inside. It's pretty cool! It's at 2:25 in this video

Anyone with a framed Elvis Costello "Trust" poster is cool in my book!

I hated all the circuitry in the "rhythm" section of my jazzmaster that I cut it out. I thought about installing a ring modulator that used an optical Theremin as the carrier for ultimate freakoutability, but I couldn't come up with an easy way to install a battery without cutting into the guitar and removing the pickguard all the time to change it. I've often wondered why guitars never evolved into using TRS connectors that would supply "Phantom" 9vDC to all your FX and even active electronics supplied from your amp. Seems like something the 80's would have dreamed up.

tommy wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 11:34 am I've always kinda wanted to do the Zappa thing and put a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer in my guitar. I'd seriously consider doing that to a Jaguar's upper rhythm control plate. Easy access. Might be enough room under there for the battery too. Or put a Blue Clipper there.

I think it could fit with a little planning.

bishopdante wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 5:48 am Now that I'm considering it...

Surely you can just run the signal from a small amplifier (via some sort of impedance matching transformer) and then send that into a guitar pickup? Mounted in a pretty conventional location.

This would then inject a magnetic force into the strings. This would mean that the resonant properties of the system would be controllable by the player.

If you inject vibration into the body, chances are the system will "howl round", and enable the pickup and body's relative movements to create a tuned oscillator at one note, like an acoustic guitar feeding back into a stage wedge.

Thanks for all the ideas to think about, BD.

I had never considered pushing the signal back into another pickup. I'm just a hack with no real understanding electrical engineering. I hope to just experiment eventually. None of this is particularly high cost, though I'm not exactly rolling in disposable cash either. I was thinking of getting two cheap lipstick tube knock off pickups to put in that strat, but I haven't looked at used markets at all. One day I'd love to build a guitar from a fence post and scrap metal, but that ain't happening any time soon. Hoping the strat project will actually happen.

I can't find the website that describes it, but Zach Lewis of Hex Horizontal built a simple oscillator into the body of his Danelectro guitar.
You can see it in this video, even though it's not used on this song.


Bonus: recorded with Steve at EA