stupid pedal trick... vcr motor bow

[pinkjimiphoton]

[Mark Hammer]

You realize you've re-invented the Godley & Creme "Gizmo"?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gizmo

[pinkjimiphoton]

i had a bass gizmotron back in the early 80's, it was cool as hell. unfortunately, it was lost to the sands of time somewhere.

similar concept.. that used little rubber wheels, and had buttons you could push on to make it touch the string.
this is kinda cool, in that you can do some neat "tremolo bowing" kinda sounds, and it costs nothing.

you could do it with little cassette motors or like beavis did, with the buzzer from a cell phone, and make it polyphonic...
but i like the way ya can just kinda hold this one.

[mistahead]

I've a couple of dozen "E-bows" knocked together primarily from stripped optical (DVD/CD) drives.

Fun.

[pinkjimiphoton]

next toy will be a salvaged speaker from a phone, a c-clamp, a splitter box and a ruby amp...

[Jdansti]

Try a piece of masking tape around the motor shaft and stuck back to itself like a tab sticking out. Cut the tab to where it's only sticking out about 1/16 inch. Let the tab hit the strings kinda like a playing card on the spokes of a bicycle wheel.

[pinkjimiphoton]

this actually works better than that, i've tried that. the teeth on the gear work great to excite the string!

[mistahead]

Binding the "bow head" (I use the transfer drive bar from in the optical drive, tack it back into the final drive of the motor) with various materials - such as hair, rubber, card, etc - with irregular shapes or fly-aways (like you suggested above JDetc) can be fun.

Don't ask me the details of why... but a soft bit of mini-mammal pelt and some fleshy backing from the same source sounds great in action, but is a one-day-then-replace consumable.

[psychedelicfish]

Maybe it would work better if you wrapped a fine grit sandpaper around the head... Could end up wrecking your strings though 

[deadastronaut]

I've a couple of dozen "E-bows" knocked together primarily from stripped optical (DVD/CD) drives.

Fun.

cool, lets take a peek at those...i built a very crude ebow too. but very cool.....


@jimi: the jimzotron...

you gotta try the sustainer man, it needs a tweak to get rid of a little noise when used clean, but when used with a little or lot of dirt
its sweet as ....especially the harmonic/ flipping the coil. ...fiddly to make the driver, but well worth the fun after...

[Mark Hammer]

A piece of heat shrink tubing ought to be able to fit snugly over the motor shaft and provide a little more traction.  Worst case, you rough up the surface of the shrink tubing a little with sandpaper.

[artifus]

hurdy gurdy? rosin?

also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76yWZcsgwF8

[pinkjimiphoton]

there's a screw thread kinda thing on it, that's why i had to reverse the polarity in the video..

if it's pulling down, it works great.. if going the other way, not so much.

rob... your sustainer is on my list for sure.

i gotta idea for one ..... gonna use the speaker from an old telephone handset, clamped to my headstock... my idea is to build some kinda inductorless wah to drive a 386n hard, thinking by sweeping the filter, it can change the feedback or sustain overtones.

so many toys, so little time...

so...like gotta make a toy to fit in a wah treadle... fuzz- wah-boost-buffered splitter, one side to the guitar amp and one side to a 386 should give enough balls to make a functional sustainer i'm thinking.

but i wanna make an ebow. that would be cool!

[mistahead]

I've not got any pictures here... but chances are you've got a CD/DVD drive around somewhere out of use - they are safe to pop open (compared to ooooh a CRT or switching supply).

If you crack open an optical drive they've got a little torque style electric motor tucked away at the back of the brick, a long final drive bar that runs to a transfer gear.

You can basically pull that assembly out whole and apply variable 1.5V-12V (the IDE primary line standard V's) to spin it.

The long drive bar is usually longer that a fretboard is wide, stainless with a couple of notches, great for attaching softer materials to.

[petey twofinger]

+1 on the phone speaker element , in my limited testing of tiny speaker thingys , those seemed to be the highest output .