The Please Steal My Idea Thread

[ThermionicScott]

We'll call it the Jazzer's Friend...

I used to live near a church. Throughout November and December, a group of five kids used to play Christmas carols on the steps in front of it. On trombones. Five trombones! Five 12-14 year-olds honking the same three carols over and over each weekend, somehow seeming to play in 27 different keys and 8.5 tempos at once. I wonder what you pedal idea would do with that.

Andy

Charles Ives would dig it!

[Mark Hammer]

Sorry for the let down, Mark.  I hope your quest eventually yields some useful info.  I had sadly never heard of the Fugs before I made my silly suggestion.

While they were known for raunchy and political songs, they were also one of the more literate bands.  If you were an Egyptologist or student of Greek and Roman philosophy or poetry, there would be much for you in their lyrics.  Politically astute as well.  You might also remember their song "CIA Man" played over the closing credits of the Coen Brothers film "Burn After Reading".
They were not known for guitar anthems, but Kenny Pine had some killer solos now and then.  His solo in "Crystal Liason" (their satire of "psychedelic music") is a keeper, very much in the vein of some of Todd Rundgrens's more emotionally wrought solos.

[Ripthorn]

a mistake amplifier

it uses DSP to analyse which notes and schales you are playing and every mistake/wrong note gets a heavy dose of reverb and delay to make it stick out even more

cheers, Iain

Works pretty well on words, should work great on guitar!

[willienillie]

NYC didn't really have much more going for it until the Ramones.

Dolls

[iainpunk]

a mistake amplifier

it uses DSP to analyse which notes and schales you are playing and every mistake/wrong note gets a heavy dose of reverb and delay to make it stick out even more

cheers, Iain

Works pretty well on words, should work great on guitar!

haha, oops

[duck_arse]

NYC didn't really have much more going for it until the Ramones.

Dolls

amen.

[duck_arse]

...

I used to live near a church. Throughout November and December, a group of five kids used to play Christmas carols on the steps in front of it. On trombones. Five trombones! Five 12-14 year-olds honking the same three carols over and over each weekend, somehow seeming to play in 27 different keys and 8.5 tempos at once. I wonder what you pedal idea would do with that.

Andy

I'd like to hear that. just once. did they take requests?

[iainpunk]

NYC didn't really have much more going for it until the Ramones.

Dolls

weren't the Stooges/iggy pop also mainly new york based???

[amptramp]

a mistake amplifier

it uses DSP to analyse which notes and schales you are playing and every mistake/wrong note gets a heavy dose of reverb and delay to make it stick out even more

cheers, Iain

We'll call it the Jazzer's Friend...

I used to live near a church. Throughout November and December, a group of five kids used to play Christmas carols on the steps in front of it. On trombones. Five trombones! Five 12-14 year-olds honking the same three carols over and over each weekend, somehow seeming to play in 27 different keys and 8.5 tempos at once. I wonder what you pedal idea would do with that.

Andy

Oh my.  I can imagine the mother of all autocorrect pedals taking five inputs at once with pitch and tempo correction and going to an amplifier capable of drowning out five trombones.

[garcho]

weren't the Stooges/iggy pop also mainly new york based???

Iggy probably got his solo thing going in NYC but they're Michigan boys.

You might also remember their song "CIA Man" played over the closing credits of the Coen Brothers film "Burn After Reading".

"who's got the secret-est service? the one that makes the other service nervous?"

[highwater]

I can't remember where, but I recall reading a story about a famous (unnamed) guitarist getting into an argument with a sound tech, insisting that they mic his amp... the sound tech eventually acquiesced, set up a mic in front of the cabinet, ran a cable backstage, and stuck the far end into a cantaloupe.

So, cantaloupe DI box, anyone?

[Fancy Lime]

...

I used to live near a church. Throughout November and December, a group of five kids used to play Christmas carols on the steps in front of it. On trombones. Five trombones! Five 12-14 year-olds honking the same three carols over and over each weekend, somehow seeming to play in 27 different keys and 8.5 tempos at once. I wonder what you pedal idea would do with that.

Andy

I'd like to hear that. just once. did they take requests?

I asked them for The Sound Of Silence. They did not heed that request, one way or the other.

[Fancy Lime]

I can't remember where, but I recall reading a story about a famous (unnamed) guitarist getting into an argument with a sound tech, insisting that they mic his amp... the sound tech eventually acquiesced, set up a mic in front of the cabinet, ran a cable backstage, and stuck the far end into a cantaloupe.

So, cantaloupe DI box, anyone?

A DI box with integrated looper? The Cantalouper Box? Brilliant! That would actually be kind of useful for looping in things like reverb or cabsim that you may not necessarily want to have on your stage sound but don't trust the FOH engineer to get right.

[patrick398]

Not a pedal but it would be cool if there was a breadboard which detected component values and placements, you hook it up to a computer with USB and when you're happy with a circuit you upload it and boom, a schematic appears. Man that would be sweet.

[EBK]

Not a pedal but it would be cool if there was a breadboard which detected component values and placements, you hook it up to a computer with USB and when you're happy with a circuit you upload it and boom, a schematic appears. Man that would be sweet.

I could imagine such a system being created using computer vision techniques.  Could readily determine which holes parts go in as you add them, assuming you keep the leads short.  Could probably add resistor color code reading too, but you'd have to manually tell it what cap values and ICs you are adding.  Creating a netlist at the end would be the easy part, relatively speaking

[iainpunk]

i currently have no breadboard space available, but i have been thinking about a device i call the character box.

it's basically a cascading of a bunch of BJT or Jfet gainstages and resistive dividers. first boosting 3x then reducing 3x and boosting and reducing etc... this would impart nonlinearities of the devices used, without really clipping. it would be an extremely subtle effect and good noiseless devices should be used but i think it can make a clean guitar sound 'warmer' and fuller due to a bunch of added harmonic content.

cheers, Iain

[ThermionicScott]

i currently have no breadboard space available, but i have been thinking about a device i call the character box.

it's basically a cascading of a bunch of BJT or Jfet gainstages and resistive dividers. first boosting 3x then reducing 3x and boosting and reducing etc... this would impart nonlinearities of the devices used, without really clipping. it would be an extremely subtle effect and good noiseless devices should be used but i think it can make a clean guitar sound 'warmer' and fuller due to a bunch of added harmonic content.

cheers, Iain

You could also use a device like that to bring out any supposed "character" from ceramic/tantalum capacitors or carbon comp resistors... 

[iainpunk]

i currently have no breadboard space available, but i have been thinking about a device i call the character box.

it's basically a cascading of a bunch of BJT or Jfet gainstages and resistive dividers. first boosting 3x then reducing 3x and boosting and reducing etc... this would impart nonlinearities of the devices used, without really clipping. it would be an extremely subtle effect and good noiseless devices should be used but i think it can make a clean guitar sound 'warmer' and fuller due to a bunch of added harmonic content.

cheers, Iain

You could also use a device like that to bring out any supposed "character" from ceramic/tantalum capacitors or carbon comp resistors... 

i did a report on that once, carbon comp resistors and tantalum's have no discernable ''character'', no inductance, in nonlinearities and other stuff going on at lower voltages (up to 25V) ceramic caps however are microphonic, their capacitance lowers with rising differential voltage, they act symmetrical however. i don't think any of those features makes a difference in tone. nonlinear behavior in transistors do however impart a bunch of harmonic content.

cheers, Iain

[EBK]

Random thought of the day:

Where are all the pedals with googly eyes on them?  Should be dozens of them.  I haven't seen any. 

[Fancy Lime]

Has anyone tried controlling a BBD flanger or delay via a theremin-like antenna controlled oscillator? I recently monkeyd around with a CD4069 based Schmitt Trigger oscillator and noticed that the frequency changes in some settings when I got my hand near some wires on the breadboard. So I checked and sure enough, there are theremin designs out there that use the exact same kind of oscillator but tuned to kHz instead of Hz. It seems feasible to use that effect fo control a BBD with a copper plate by foot, doesn't it? If I had any time at all, I'd get right to it but I don't. I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with that idea. Is there a commercial pedal that does that? Have you guys tried?

Cheers,
Andy