On-board effects for electric guitar

[ElectricDruid]

One guitar that has the holy grail of fuzz was the one used by Norman Greenbaum to do "Spirit in the Sky".  It looked like a Telecaster with a few other controls and switches and it has apparently been lost - he had the one hit, went back to being a goat farmer and had a modest income from the song but at one point, he sold the guitar and didn't know what became of it.  He said his roadie had made the modifications.  I don't think there is anyone on this forum who wouldn't want to know what was in there.  There was a separate thread about it that came to no conclusions about what was in it or where the guitar was.

I'Ve definitely heard this story too. Whether that makes it any more likely to be true is of course open to question. But if there was a simple answer to what the "spirit fuzz" was, I think we'd have seen it before now.
It's funny, because it's such a totally epic and classic sound, but if you actually listen to it, it's really blown out and uneven and farty. If you'd built it like that on your breadboard, you'll probably still be twiddling with it, trying to get it "right". Just goes to show...something or other!
Still, for onboard effects, they don't get much more famous than that one.

[aron]

Would the FZ1 (Maestro) be a possibility? It kind of sounds like that recording.

[Mark Hammer]

Whatever it was, it didn't actually HAVE to be in the guitar itself.  I'm sure that running a cable from the guitar to that same circuit in a box on the floor would have sounded the same.  And there was nothing about its use in the song itself that necessitated it being on-board the guitar.

All of which brings me back to my my distinction between "kewl" and useful.  If it helps you do something that you couldn't do or do as easily if the effect was in a box on the floor, then stick it on the guitar.  But if its physical location makes little or no difference in what it does or how you use it, keep it off the guitar.  Something like a nice big soft-touch "killswitch" button works better within reach of your picking hand than within reach of your foot.  It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's very useful for some styles and players.  Doesn't need batteries, either.

[Elektrojänis]

One thing that would almost need to be in the guitar if you want different effects to each pickup and then blend them... Or effect on one pickup an dry on the other. Depending on situation it might be better just to have separate outputs for the pickups, but for live use it might be practical to have one guitar with it all built in and another for regular stuff. 

[amptramp]

What could go in a guitar?  Ooh!  I know!  I know! (Pick me, teacher!)  A burst box.  You could have a pushbutton stutter function so your right hand has something to do while you are waiting for a chord to damp out by itself.

[iainpunk]

What could go in a guitar?  Ooh!  I know!  I know! (Pick me, teacher!)  A burst box.  You could have a pushbutton stutter function so your right hand has something to do while you are waiting for a chord to damp out by itself.

i doubt he has the time to learn the culture, history and nuances of that thread to reliably use such a device on his guitar...

cheers

[Ell]

One thing that would almost need to be in the guitar if you want different effects to each pickup and then blend them... Or effect on one pickup an dry on the other. Depending on situation it might be better just to have separate outputs for the pickups, but for live use it might be practical to have one guitar with it all built in and another for regular stuff.

I was recently thinking "I could have a small pickup just for the two lowest strings", and then that signal would go to a separate octave down effect to simulate a bass player for solo performances. Then when I started looking at different octave effects I realised that every Boss Octave since the OC-3 already does this by using a "range" control that lets you have the octave set to just the lowest two strings, or whatever range you want.

[Mark Hammer]

A jazz player/teacher in town has a custom 7-string with a fanned fretboard, that routes the two lowest strings to a separate output and amplifier for bass.  He has a single custom 7-string humbucker pickup by the neck.  I briefly tried out his guitar, but I honestly can't remember if those two bass strings were flatwound or not.  I also don't know if the separate bass output results from some type of filtering of the pickup, or whether the  pickup itself is a pair of 5-string coils and a second pair of 2-string coils.

Somebody locally was recently selling one of these honeys from the late 1960s, that has separate pickups for the upper and lower strings, which can be combined in a variety of ways, if you look closely at the pushbuttons.

[radio]

A jazz player/teacher in town has a custom 7-string with a fanned fretboard, that routes the two lowest strings to a separate output and amplifier for bass.  He has a single custom 7-string humbucker pickup by the neck.  I briefly tried out his guitar, but I honestly can't remember if those two bass strings were flatwound or not.  I also don't know if the separate bass output results from some type of filtering of the pickup, or whether the  pickup itself is a pair of 5-string coils and a second pair of 2-string coils.

One bass string too many,but sth like this?  http://www.novaxguitars.com/sales/ch8-semihollow.html

[Ell]

A jazz player/teacher in town has a custom 7-string with a fanned fretboard, that routes the two lowest strings to a separate output and amplifier for bass.  He has a single custom 7-string humbucker pickup by the neck.  I briefly tried out his guitar, but I honestly can't remember if those two bass strings were flatwound or not.  I also don't know if the separate bass output results from some type of filtering of the pickup, or whether the  pickup itself is a pair of 5-string coils and a second pair of 2-string coils.

Somebody locally was recently selling one of these honeys from the late 1960s, that has separate pickups for the upper and lower strings, which can be combined in a variety of ways, if you look closely at the pushbuttons.

Some cool ideas. The pictured guitar reminds me of what I think Leo Fender was going for in some of his designs, the widest possible range of tones. Here's a G&L Comanche with similar unusual pickups, but less ways to combine and split the signals.

[iainpunk]

so i thought that i might be a good idea to have a thread for discussing guitar wiring schemes, especially the weird and wacky ones, like the Russian bass i bought that had a germanium transistor inside, despite being a passive bass without a battery...

it uses the transistor in the same way as the ''abused'' transistor in the green ringer, its used as two diodes.
i re-drew the schematic with normal Ge diodes and a center split humbucker instead of the transistor and both the neck and bridge pickup, since the diodes are cheaper and the guitar i copied it to only has one (really high output) humbucker. it does gate a bit, and works best with high output pickups and low voltage diodes.



hope you like the thread idea and the '''jawari pickup wiring''',
cheers, Iain

a passive octave up. i stole the idea form a really modified eastern bloc frankenstein bass i bought a few years ago, the selector switch has one position that does a sketchy octave up using both pickups.

cheers

[Ell]

a passive octave up. i stole the idea form a really modified eastern bloc frankenstein bass i bought a few years ago, the selector switch has one position that does a sketchy octave up using both pickups.

cheers

Do you ever use that sound?
If you look for a cheap guitar now you'll basically find 1000 strat copies. There's something fun about the time when companies realised that electric guitars and basses were profitable, but there wasn't necessarily a "standard guitar" design yet, so all these weird catalog guitars exist, and I guess it was even weirder if they had never even held a P-bass before like it possibly was in the Soviet Union in the 60's.

EDIT:
You've also just got me very interested in the Green Ringer. I think that'll be the next project I have a go at after this. Cool little "pedal"

[Elektrojänis]

I was recently thinking "I could have a small pickup just for the two lowest strings", and then that signal would go to a separate octave down effect to simulate a bass player for solo performances. Then when I started looking at different octave effects I realised that every Boss Octave since the OC-3 already does this by using a "range" control that lets you have the octave set to just the lowest two strings, or whatever range you want.

And then there is this: https://www.alittlethunder.com/

Which is exactly the small pickup you describe with the octave down built in. I quess the difference on OC-3 range control is that you can have the octave on any note on those two low strings and only on those two low strings. I quess OC-3 has to produce that octave down on any note that is on the defined range no matter what string you play it on. I don't think one is better than the other though. It depends on how you want to voice things and how you want to control the bass note when you play.

[Ell]

And then there is this: https://www.alittlethunder.com/

Which is exactly the small pickup you describe with the octave down built in. I quess the difference on OC-3 range control is that you can have the octave on any note on those two low strings and only on those two low strings. I quess OC-3 has to produce that octave down on any note that is on the defined range no matter what string you play it on. I don't think one is better than the other though. It depends on how you want to voice things and how you want to control the bass note when you play.

That's quite cool! Quite an elegant solution to not having a bass player haha. There's also the slightly less elegant "submarine pickup"



Another cool guitar innovation that interested me was the Line 6 Variac guitar. It had a knob that allowed you to digitally change tunings in an instant. Before I built my double-neck this was one of the things I looked into for solving my problem of having songs in more than one tuning. Another option was the Gibson robot tuner system, but that seemed over-complicated, and had the additional problems caused by string tension and stress.

[iainpunk]

a passive octave up. i stole the idea form a really modified eastern bloc frankenstein bass i bought a few years ago, the selector switch has one position that does a sketchy octave up using both pickups.

cheers

Do you ever use that sound?

yes, a lot. i do a bunch of noizey doom metal stuff where it works. it does significantluy drop the gain and sustain, due to having to overcome diode forward voltage

If you look for a cheap guitar now you'll basically find 1000 strat copies. There's something fun about the time when companies realised that electric guitars and basses were profitable, but there wasn't necessarily a "standard guitar" design yet, so all these weird catalog guitars exist, and I guess it was even weirder if they had never even held a P-bass before like it possibly was in the Soviet Union in the 60's.

EDIT:
You've also just got me very interested in the Green Ringer. I think that'll be the next project I have a go at after this. Cool little "pedal"

ive experimented with lots of ways to do an octave up and currently have an opamp octave on the breadboard. it uses a precision diode.

the body of the bass is the weird tonika bass shape, but features an URAL neck (with a different scale length, so the intonation is really bad at this time) original pickups, but very un-original wiring.

cheers