funny little circuits you can put in your guitar?

[samzeppelin]

thinking about build a booster inside my guitar will this work or will it be like lota af noise or some thing like that?
are there any others circuits you can put in? preamp? fuzz? sustainer?
you all understand it needs to be small
the guitar Im gonna hotrod is a Eipiphone lespaul so I can replace the 2 tone pots with some other control pot cause i never use them 

/Sam

[Steben]

Hi there

have you ever really looked good inside? There is a huge amount of place there, isn't it?
Small boosters are as simple as boiling water. All you need is equivalent space for 2 or 3 9V batteries.
There is even a possibility (try google at "FET preamp") to feed your small circuit through your guitar cable (no battery inside your guitar).

[MartyMart]

Sam, it all depends on what you need ?
Booster, there's loads of small versions or even a silicon NPN Rangemaster, but use
0.047-0.1 uf caps and make it a full range boost.
Check out the "One knob Fuzz" in Dragonfly's layouts, possibly the best sounding
tiny little fuzz around !
You've got room in there, maybe even for an Orange squeezer compressor
with a small dpdt switch for on/off  !

Have fun,
Marty.

[Mark Hammer]

I am VERY biased in this regard, so take what I say with that qualification.  I am personally not partial to sticking circuitry in a guitar that is not passive and/or very simple.  There are a few reasons:

1) Changing batteries in a guitar risks the finish and screw-hole thread.  Unless changing a battery is something you can stretch out to every 14 months or so (low current requirements), or unless you can install one of those nifty screwless battery compartments, anything involving batteries can be a pain in the butt.

2) With the exception of pickup switching, most things that can be installed in a guitar can be done better outside the instrument.  They can have better power supplies, more options, be inserted at your choice of points in the signal chain, and so on.  The only thing where I suppose there is no substitute for location in the guitar might be an active buffer/preamp, although take a look at Don Tillman's phantom-powered FET-based preamp that fits inside a stereo plug.  My guess is that any benefits coming from situating a FET-buffer on one side of your guitar's output jack also occur when the buffer sits on the other side of the output jack.

3) As B.B.King says, "These ten fingers are all I've got".  Certainly the freedom of movement to work controls and such will depend on your musical tastes, but personally I would ratherlet my feet take care of switching - I have other plans for the hands.

That's not the gospel from the mountain, but it does include a few considerations for you to think about before taking the plunge.  If any of them matter to you, you may want to change your plans.  BTW, I do have a small single transistor booster/buffer in one of my guitars, whose battery I change once every year or so.

[petemoore]

  risks the finish and screw-hole thread
  I haven't figured anything out for preserving finish, other than cutting a hole in cloth like a surgery bib..
  But screw hole threads, when they get loose are a pretty easy fix, and seem to last for much longer after thin strips of toothpick are glued in there.
  I tape off the finish or keep a wet rag for cleaning up the elmers glue all, then just dab a toothpick in glue, just enough to wet the sides of the hole, push the wood all the way down in the hole, pull it up enough to snip it off so it is short enough to be just under the surface, then clamp it and shape it to the sides of the hole with the screw, a super light [wiped off] coating of oil on a rusty screw, or take the screw out after 10 minutes and wash it off.
  The glue strengthens the grain of the thread hole, the toothpick tightens the screw/screwhole, I do this routinely when any looseness is detected...for strap pegs it is recommended, a bent strap peg screw [the tightness of the screw relieves bending pressures on it].
  I try to get the toothpick on the bottom of the pegscrew hole so the screw is pulled toward the glue reinforced guitar body grain by the strap.
  I've had great success improving the wedges in guitars this way.

[Ge_Whiz]

If you intend to install active electronics in your guitar - and almost any small effects circuit could be used - I strongly recommend that you use a DPDT pull-switch pot for one of the controls so that if the circuitry or batteries fail, you can bypass the lot and run the guitar passively.

[Marcos - Munky]

I was thinking to do this in a old guitar that I have too. One suggestion is to use a stereo jack with an stereo cable, so you can power the circuit using the cable. Then you run it in a box with a mono output and a power supply input to connect to the wire in the cable that will power the circuit.

[jmusser]

If I was going to put one in, it would be Joe Davisson's Easy Drive. It one of the best sounding circuits on the planet, and it uses 1 transistor. You can get OD, distortion and fuzz out of it, just by a turn of the guitar's volume knob. I doubt it's something I'd ever do mind you, but that would be my pick for getting a lot of mileage out of a very small circuit.