On-board effects for electric guitar

[Ell]

Is there a reason more people aren't interested in on-board effects? I've been playing around with them for the past year. I currently have a no-knob orange squeezer, and a no-knob silicon fuzz face installed in my guitar. I've also experimented with a ridiculous octave boost, but it wasn't useful for the kind of music I was making.

Recently I've been wondering why basses often have active equalisers, but electric guitars rarely do. I've been tempted to use concentric pots and build a RunOff Groove Tonemender to go right before the output. My thought process is that if I need to adjust anything it will be right there with me, and not far away on an amp. Also, I was wondering if it would help my creativity in coming up with different sounds on the fly.

Has anyone else experimented with on-board effects?

[idy]

It's really fun, it is kind of gimmicky, It can be very practical. IF you love knobs and switches it will make you happier.
Cons:
you are stuck with "that" fuzz.
You can't use "that" fuzz with another guitar. Those two ideas encapsulate the glory of stomp boxes.
If the effect has an "issue", it is harder to "swap" it out, and depending on the guitar (Strat?) harder to access for repair.
Maybe, if the battery dies, no guitar for you.

If you are a one guitar guy, who only and always uses a few circuits, it's handy, but room inside the guitar is also limited.

there is a reason behind the popularity of active bass... I don't play bass and forget what it is... maybe guitarists are more old fashioned ( and more likely to use several instruments?)

But, if you are not trying to preserve the "original" condition of the solder in your guitar, no reason not to plunge in and try.
If you have a battery that is always on when the guitar is plugged in it will die on you, and if you have it switched this should be somewhere where it is not possible to accidentally hit it. And if you are going to bypass it, this needs to be, like in stomp boxes, separate from power switch, or else "bump."

I have an old Ibanez with a Rex Bogue (opamp based) booster. It is amazing having all that volume (or "ballz") on tap. But batteries in a guitar, it is a matter of personal...taste. Had a friend with a compressor in his Rickenbacker. So cool.

[Rob Strand]

Look up the Chet Atkins guitar and Chris Squire bass.   There used to be a YT video where Chris Squire demo'd the bass.

[Ell]

It's really fun, it is kind of gimmicky, It can be very practical. IF you love knobs and switches it will make you happier.

So on my guitar I've just got the volume knob and a three-way switch that goes between
Dry -> Orange Squeezer compressor -> Silicon Fuzz Face
I did some experimenting to find my preferred settings and just wired in resistors instead of pots (or it could be trimpots).
I think this works with the effects I have. A Nurse Quacky auto-wah or a Flanger would probably need more knobs.

If the effect has an "issue", it is harder to "swap" it out, and depending on the guitar (Strat?) harder to access for repair.

Yeah, one of my guitars is a Strat-copy. I was trying to solve this issue in my head. I was tempted to cut the scratchplate to the side of the pickups, so that that half can be removed and changed, or for battery changes.

there is a reason behind the popularity of active bass... I don't play bass and forget what it is... maybe guitarists are more old fashioned ( and more likely to use several instruments?)

I tried to find out! There was a suggestion on some bass forum I visited that basses have blend-knobs and active eq's because they need to find one good sound and stick with it for a whole song, while guitars have switches because they may need to switch between a rhythm sound and a lead sound.
I always just thought guitarists were more traditionalist though. We get obsessed over which exact capacitors were used in 1959 or ridiculous things like that.

But, if you are not trying to preserve the "original" condition of the solder in your guitar, no reason not to plunge in and try.
If you have a battery that is always on when the guitar is plugged in it will die on you, and if you have it switched this should be somewhere where it is not possible to accidentally hit it. And if you are going to bypass it, this needs to be, like in stomp boxes, separate from power switch, or else "bump."

I went with a stereo jack, so it's only powered when I'm plugged in, I just have to remember to unplug it. I've found that the combination of fuzz face and orange squeezer off of one battery does last a long time. If I do throw a Tonemender in, that may change.

What other effects do you think would be helpful to have close at hand at all times? Might be cool to be able to control a delay knob live, but that kind of throws your delay at the start of your effects chain.

[GibsonGM]

Off the top of my head:  active volume control, and 3+ band EQ would be 2 I'd love to have at my hand.  Followed by whatever one's tastes dictate (fuzz etc).

[iainpunk]

ive been contemplating this a while. i would put an overdrive/boost circuit in to my guitar. it already has a passive bass cut and volume, but id wire the input of the boost in before the volume, so the actual gain is only controlled by the gain control in the boost/overdrive, and not the (clean) volume control. the bass cut would stay connected in front of the overdrive/boost.

probably specifically my Xenos Overdrive, as it works great as a (dirty) boost with its gain down and volume cranked and amazingly smooth as overdrive with the gain higher and the volume dialed back.

cheers

[Mark Hammer]

I have been a doubter of the wisdom of on-board FX for well over 40 years at this point.  My reasoning is thus:

1) Remote powering of the circuits is cumbersome and battery power is a nuisance and performance-risk, although the development of USB-rechargeable lithium-ion batteries has improved matters.  But then, that is not usually the domain of DIY-ers.

2) The order of effects cannot be changed for onboard stuff.  Whatever is first stays first and nothing can be inserted ahead of it.

3) The location of any controls or switches to maximize usability can be problematic, and engaging/bypassing FX will be awkward (can't use both hands to play AND switch things the way one can play and use your foot to switch).

4) The available real-estate is limited so mods or adding controls to optimize FX is difficult and sometimes impossible.

If one has a "beater" guitar, in addition to many other guitars, and you treat the one with the onboard stuff as a "special case" or special-purpose guitar, but use your others for regular playing, then have at it and treat that guitar as kind of an all-in-one device.  But things that are done more effectively, efficiently, and conveniently OFF the guitar should be done there, while things that can usually only be done ON the guitar (e.g., pickup switching) should be done on the guitar.

There are some things that can improve the instrument's output signal that aren't "effects", like good buffering and optimum S/N output, and improved tone shaping that might otherwise yield signal loss.  But other than that, I'm no fan of onboard FX for a main guitar.

I make the distinction between ephemeral and useful technology.  The former is something that makes a 19 year-old say "Coooool!", while the latter is something that makes someone my age exclaim "Finally!".  Either the technology solves an enduring problem, or it's just dangling a shiny object in front of a kitten.  I find most attempts at on-board FX don't really solve problems better than anything off the instrument.

[Ell]

1) Remote powering of the circuits is cumbersome and battery power is a nuisance and performance-risk, although the development of USB-rechargeable lithium-ion batteries has improved matters.  But then, that is not usually the domain of DIY-ers.

I haven't looked into any other kinds of batteries, but this could be an interesting thing for me to look into. I currently have a 9 volt rechargeable battery that does charge off of USB, as well as the traditional way of recharging. I haven't yet set it up so that the guitar can just be plugged in over night without removing the backplate, but battery life has so far been very good with the limited effects I've been using.

2) The order of effects cannot be changed for onboard stuff.  Whatever is first stays first and nothing can be inserted ahead of it.

This is the reason I've gone for a Fuzz Face and a compressor so far. Something like reverb probably would not work because of effects chain reasons. I can't think of MANY effects that would be great as onboard effects, but maybe an Auto-wah would also work if that was a big part of someone's playing. As you said though, probably better off on the floor. I just wonder if it would be helpful having SOME controls more accessible during a performance.

3) The location of any controls or switches to maximize usability can be problematic, and engaging/bypassing FX will be awkward (can't use both hands to play AND switch things the way one can play and use your foot to switch).

For me, I wired the effects up to my 3-way strat switch, my pickup selection is now controlled by a blend pot (I just have two pickups). I find this to be a quick and easy solution. Also, so far I have gone with no-knob effects. My next idea would be the EQ though, so that might be more problematic as you said. I built a Tonemender once before and I seem to remember the "Mid" control being similar to a general volume knob. If I'm remembering that correctly, I perhaps could get by with just having 1 concentric pot to control Bass/Treble, and also skipping out on the boost portion, and also possibly skipping the mid-shift and leaving it "low". So if the pedal the works the way I remember it working, I would leave it on all the time and just be adding or cutting Bass and Treble, and leaving everything else alone.

If one has a "beater" guitar, in addition to many other guitars, and you treat the one with the onboard stuff as a "special case" or special-purpose guitar, but use your others for regular playing, then have at it and treat that guitar as kind of an all-in-one device.  But things that are done more effectively, efficiently, and conveniently OFF the guitar should be done there, while things that can usually only be done ON the guitar (e.g., pickup switching) should be done on the guitar.

As a side note, I only currently have 2 guitars, and one of them is a double neck (I play in two different tunings). So yes, as ridiculous as this was already sounding, all of this is on a double-neck as well haha. That does mean that real estate is not a problem, I have almost endless room compared to a smaller guitar.
In my Strat, I did extend the cavity a little bit under the scratchplate to make room for a battery and on-board circuits. If someone has 10 or more guitars, it would be a huge amount of work to install on-board effects in all of them, so in that case it would make 100* more sense to just build it once and put it in a pedal on the floor.

I make the distinction between ephemeral and useful technology.  The former is something that makes a 19 year-old say "Coooool!", while the latter is something that makes someone my age exclaim "Finally!".  Either the technology solves an enduring problem, or it's just dangling a shiny object in front of a kitten.  I find most attempts at on-board FX don't really solve problems better than anything off the instrument.

Hahaha, you might have touched a nerve here. I think there's a way that these things can be done elegantly, and in a way that makes things easier for a player, and there is also a point when it becomes over-complicated and HARDER to focus on just playing. I'd like to think that some of these things can be helpful

[Mark Hammer]

I've told the story before, but when I realized that the Line 6 standard for expression control was simply a 0-10k variable resistance, I thought "Hey, I could do that with a photocell!".  So I attached a photocell to the surface of the guitar with some double-sided tape, between the bridge and the control knobs, such that I could easily reach it with my pinky finger.  Covering it with my finger, blocked ambient light and raised the LDR resistance, while removing my finger dropped the resistance.  It necessitated attaching additional wires to the basic guitar cable to run them to the expression pedal input of the M5 pedal I was controlling.

But aren't you the guy who said to do things OFF the guitar if they were done better there?  Guilty as charged.  But the interesting thing was that the feel provided by wiggling my pinky around was very different than that produced via an expression pedal.  First, it was decidedly faster, and second it was decidedly "jerkier",and the response of the LDR yielded a somewhat different time dynamic to sweeps.  So yes, an expression pedal on a pedalboard probably would have been more convenient,but this was *different*, and because of that, justified.

I have a Source Audio "Hot Hand" wireless controller, that fits on one's picking hand like a little rubber ring, and can sense motion in three dimensions/axes, transmitting the one you select to the M5 (or two axes of your choice to a Source Audio pedal).  The problem/limitation it has is that you can't wave your picking hand around AND pick/strum at the same time.  So any tonal changes you want to impose can really only be imposed *after* you strum, and can wave your hand at some distance from the guitar.  The surface-mounted photocell actually lets me wiggle my pinky *while* I'm strumming, which is nice.

So, the moral of the story is that sometimes things installed in or on the guitar let you do things that are either done better on the guitar, or simply can't be done off the guitar (a B-Bender is one excellent example).  But that universe is small, and very selective.

[radio]

I have a special case ,where in my experience ,the guitar would benefit from an always on effect

but with a kind of tricky switching.

Its my 20 year old Fernandes with a sustainer light. You get a more balanced tone ,in either 2 modes

of the sustainer(the light doesn't have the mixed option) with a compressor as a first effect.

By balanced I mean the sustain sound seems less affected by the bass strings ,just puts the lighter

strings more upfront.

Now it might not be worse the hassel if your sustainer on switch needs to switch off the compressor.

If you re anyway  just after that sound with the sustainer off,it might as well be build in.

[Elektrojänis]

there is a reason behind the popularity of active bass... I don't play bass and forget what it is... maybe guitarists are more old fashioned ( and more likely to use several instruments?)

Most guitarists seem to lean more on older, maybe more vintage style things, so that might be a part of it. One other reason probably is, that EQ affects the sound very differently if it's placed before your overdrives/distortions than when placed after those. Guitarists use a lot of overdrives and distortions and with those the EQ on guitar can't really control the sound the same way the amp controls do. On the other hand many bass players use very little overdrive or distortion and the EQ on the bass will affect the sound pretty much the same way amp EQ does (as far as the EQ circuits themselves are similar).

And then there is fuzz... Even if you set your active controls flat many fuzzes will sound very different than with a passive instrument. Most people tend to like the sound that passive guitars produce with fuzzes. And this is why I want my bass to be passive.

[Mark Hammer]

Frank Zappa had a Systech Harmonic Energizer built into at least one, and possibly two, of his guitars.  The circuit provides a tunable resonant boost, similar to a %^&*ed wah.  (Apologies to Madbean for squishing the drawing previously posted there.)

[Ell]

I've told the story before, but when I realized that the Line 6 standard for expression control was simply a 0-10k variable resistance, I thought "Hey, I could do that with a photocell!".  So I attached a photocell to the surface of the guitar with some double-sided tape, between the bridge and the control knobs, such that I could easily reach it with my pinky finger.  Covering it with my finger, blocked ambient light and raised the LDR resistance, while removing my finger dropped the resistance.  It necessitated attaching additional wires to the basic guitar cable to run them to the expression pedal input of the M5 pedal I was controlling.

But aren't you the guy who said to do things OFF the guitar if they were done better there?  Guilty as charged.  But the interesting thing was that the feel provided by wiggling my pinky around was very different than that produced via an expression pedal.  First, it was decidedly faster, and second it was decidedly "jerkier",and the response of the LDR yielded a somewhat different time dynamic to sweeps.  So yes, an expression pedal on a pedalboard probably would have been more convenient,but this was *different*, and because of that, justified.

I have a Source Audio "Hot Hand" wireless controller, that fits on one's picking hand like a little rubber ring, and can sense motion in three dimensions/axes, transmitting the one you select to the M5 (or two axes of your choice to a Source Audio pedal).  The problem/limitation it has is that you can't wave your picking hand around AND pick/strum at the same time.  So any tonal changes you want to impose can really only be imposed *after* you strum, and can wave your hand at some distance from the guitar.  The surface-mounted photocell actually lets me wiggle my pinky *while* I'm strumming, which is nice.

So, the moral of the story is that sometimes things installed in or on the guitar let you do things that are either done better on the guitar, or simply can't be done off the guitar (a B-Bender is one excellent example).  But that universe is small, and very selective.

That actually sounds very cool. If you, or someone, got really deep into playing that way it could open up a new dimension of expression.

There is an interesting conundrum that switches are more easily controlled by the foot, hands-free, and knobs are more easily turned by hand (or expression footpedal). So ideally, either every pot would at torso-height (or an expression pedal), and every switchable thing would be on the floor. Of course, this complicates everything.
I took this idea and tried to create a computer controller with footpedals. The idea was that for editing music, I could do things like start recording with a tap of the foot, while in a playing position holding my guitar. The other application of this was for video games. Some controls that are used less often (like assist moves in a fighting game) were pressed by footpedal. The way I did it failed because I used sensitive switches which broke, but proper momentary switches could work. There's a reason cars have pedals, it is a good system.

One other reason probably is, that EQ affects the sound very differently if it's placed before your overdrives/distortions than when placed after those. Guitarists use a lot of overdrives and distortions and with those the EQ on guitar can't really control the sound the same way the amp controls do. On the other hand many bass players use very little overdrive or distortion and the EQ on the bass will affect the sound pretty much the same way amp EQ does

Excellent point. There is a benefit to boosting treble before overdrive, but yeah, in terms of tone shaping an EQ is much more powerful if it comes after overdrive/distortion.

Frank Zappa had a Systech Harmonic Energizer built into at least one, and possibly two, of his guitars.  The circuit provides a tunable resonant boost, similar to a %^&*ed wah.  (Apologies to Madbean for squishing the drawing previously posted there.)

That makes sense! He used that sound all over the place.

[roseblood11]

I really like to have a switchable buffer/booster inside the guitar, and maybe EQ, but nothing else - Mark Hammer explained why...
A nice option ist the Blade VSC-3, with a three position switch: passive (bypass), mid boost, treble and bass boost. The original circuit has trimpots, but I will build it with pots on the pickguard.

[Mark Hammer]

I have a special case ,where in my experience ,the guitar would benefit from an always on effect

but with a kind of tricky switching.

Its my 20 year old Fernandes with a sustainer light. You get a more balanced tone ,in either 2 modes

of the sustainer(the light doesn't have the mixed option) with a compressor as a first effect.

By balanced I mean the sustain sound seems less affected by the bass strings ,just puts the lighter

strings more upfront.

Now it might not be worse the hassel if your sustainer on switch needs to switch off the compressor.

If you re anyway  just after that sound with the sustainer off,it might as well be build in.

I would imagine that, unless the "tug" of the sustainer coil was particularly strong, the wound strings would require more energy to be nudged into vibrating by the sustainer, while the unwound strings would be more in the "sure, yeah, whatever you say, boss" end of the spectrum.

[Electron Tornado]

Is there a reason more people aren't interested in on-board effects? I've been playing around with them for the past year. I currently have a no-knob orange squeezer, and a no-knob silicon fuzz face installed in my guitar. I've also experimented with a ridiculous octave boost, but it wasn't useful for the kind of music I was making.

Has anyone else experimented with on-board effects?

Look up Messenger Fuzz. Mark Farner of Grand Funk had a Messenger guitar with on board fuzz. If I recall, I think you can hear that fuzz being used on Grand Funk's live album.

[radio]

I would imagine that, unless the "tug" of the sustainer coil was particularly strong, the wound strings would require more energy to be nudged into vibrating by the sustainer, while the unwound strings would be more in the "sure, yeah, whatever you say, boss" end of the spectrum.
[/quote]

Indeed , that would have been my intuition too. Now what convinced me of the contrairy, without having tried it under the same condition ,is

this short video of Steve Vai:   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxEw_08eQ4s

Maybe I m mistaking what he does,the video quality is poor, but doesnt he just stop the 6th string with the tongue to let the others ring?

It might be just a theatralic damping of a string ,but even my Roland JC22 just gets "louder" 6th string.




Maybe my adjustments of micros or sustainer are wrong?

[amptramp]

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.

[radio]

I don't know if I remember that correctly,but I think "Spirit in the sky"

is associated with the Fuzzrite

[Elektrojänis]

I've told the story before, but when I realized that the Line 6 standard for expression control was simply a 0-10k variable resistance, I thought "Hey, I could do that with a photocell!".  So I attached a photocell to the surface of the guitar with some double-sided tape, between the bridge and the control knobs, such that I could easily reach it with my pinky finger.  Covering it with my finger, blocked ambient light and raised the LDR resistance, while removing my finger dropped the resistance.  It necessitated attaching additional wires to the basic guitar cable to run them to the expression pedal input of the M5 pedal I was controlling.

This reminds me of an experiment I did way back... Probably late 90's. I found schematic for a resonant filter that only needed single variable resistor for frequency control. (Back then schematics for such circuits were a not all that common on internet.) I built it and used an LDR with a longish wire as a control. I stuck the LDR on the pickguard of my guitar near the point I strum, right next to high E string. This way my hand blocked the light to the LDR in rythm of my playing. It was quite funky when playng rythm, but it was a bit of a hassle to use. I probably didn't write anything about this on any message boards at that time.

And this reminds me of another thing that probably sounds a bit unreal. Some time after that experiment, Zachary Vex mentioned an effect he was planning that had to be built on a guitar on some old incarnation of one of these DIY guitar effect message boards. I answered with a something like "How about wah probe on a guitar?" and mentioned my LDR/filter experiment. He didn't answer anything, and I forgot about it. A few years ago this popped into my mind again and I started wondering what that built in effect in a guitar was what he was planning back then. After some googling I found out about Drip Guitar.

Edit: Found it the conversation. I have tried before and failed but this time I found it: https://archive.ampage.org/threads/1/fxgd/023298/Re_On-board_effects-2.html

I remembered it a bit wrong though... I didn' say wah probe (odd, given my own experiment was wah type thing) and he did answer.

One other reason probably is, that EQ affects the sound very differently if it's placed before your overdrives/distortions than when placed after those. Guitarists use a lot of overdrives and distortions and with those the EQ on guitar can't really control the sound the same way the amp controls do. On the other hand many bass players use very little overdrive or distortion and the EQ on the bass will affect the sound pretty much the same way amp EQ does

Excellent point. There is a benefit to boosting treble before overdrive, but yeah, in terms of tone shaping an EQ is much more powerful if it comes after overdrive/distortion.

EQ before distortion can be very usefull, but it is probably much harder to understand to average guitarist. Most will probably rely on the "preset" pre-eq built in their distortion/overdrive pedals or amps overdrive channels and only think about EQ as in post distortion EQ. If they need different pre-distortion EQ, they will buy another pedal. They won't call it different pre distortion EQ. They call it different distortion character or something.