Guess what this is... (PIC)

[Arno van der Heijden]

Francisco,

Did you wind the coils by hand?

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

Yes, and the cores were glued to the pcb before winding... Makes winding a lot harder, but that's what I did.

Fp

[psw]

who`s gonna build the first hexaphonic sustainator...  :?:  :idea:  :?:

ME....



On the flaming issue...not it mainly came from one Mr Coffee through PM's...who claimed extensive expertise and many years of experimenting with them...plus extensive knowledge of what others have done...

A quick look at all his posts showed no useful contributions by Mr C when this subject came up....

My appologies to the good people here...I wont bother repeating the comments...mainly he doubted (insisted) that the technology that allowed the above drivers to work didn't exist...but mostly was distressed that I didn't explicitly explain to him how it worked....no loss IMO...

There was another fellow who was even worse from another forum...but that's another story...

Anyway...on the hex driver...to really get true hexophonic sustain you're probably going to need a hex pickup and six driving amps...hmmmm

Also I found that my hex drivers didn't like string bending...eventually I worked out a way of mounting it on the bridge to overcome this but the problems with alignment and EMI were pretty great so I've abandoned the work on hex drivers for now...

One problem I also had is that the fields of each driver effected the other. While one string is fairly easy to drive....multipule strings have their own problems....hex drivers even more...

Anyway...R.G. has added some really useful contributions over at PG and I'm more that happy to help people who want to give it a go over there...(cant be everywhere)...

There's a tutorial in the Tutorial, Electronics section off the thread from the Main Index/Topics page...but I think my pickup/driver pics are at about page 48 or so...yes it is a very long thread...

So...on the original post is this a DIY ebow...is one coil a pickup and the other a driver??

thanks to those who came over to visit...pete

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

PSW: yes it is. Although it shouldn't be called that, as I said I've never being in the pressence of an Ebow, this isn't an ebow, it just does what the ebow does.

One of the coils is a pickup the other one a driver.

Fp

[psw]

...You know it looks very much like the device in the ebow patent...before they came up with the ergonomic case...You should try and make a box that has skids to ride the outer strings and you'll find it easier to play....

I'm not sure if this has been posted before but here's a dutch ebow circuit which uses a small transformer as the driver and a telephone pickup as the driver...whatever that is...It looks like He's actually made a mold of an actual ebow to cast the thing in epoxy....

http://logosfoundation.org/kursus/4047.html

Someone did an acurate translation for us on the PG Sustainer Thread...

Driving a single string is easier, but the principle is the same for all six...The guitar's pickup requires buffering to prevent loading it down...actually it needs a bit of an extra boost, the amount depends a little on how hot your pickups are...changing the sensitivity control (gain) provides a range of effects from volume from swells to driver distortion to more subtle harmonics on the decay of a note...different to an ebow but not a one trick pony...

BTW...do you know if you switch the pase of the coils (say switch the driver leads around) it'll suppress the fundumental and drive the harmonics, usually an octave above. With an ebow you can move it for more control of the effect...with the sustainer, it's not always the octave sometimes it's a higher harmonic like an octave and a fifth...very effective...try it out

Nice build...a lot of people talk/ask about building an "ebow" device but not many seem to succeed...it's really quite easy in principle...perhaps winding coils put's people off...

Could I ask...how does it interact with the pickups...? I believe an ebow interacts with the pickups magnetic fields to create interesting effects (tremolo, distortion, etc)...do you get interferace if your driver gets too close to the active pickup...? Squeel or anything...I never quite understood why the ebow wouldn't, like my sustainer, create problems, but maybe it's self contained pickup solves the problem...

cheers...psw

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

I don't get squeal, I did with my first experiment where I overwound the pickup and did it in a very messy way.

And it does interfere with the pickup's magnetic field, there are sweet spots and also dead spots, so you can do the swells and other effects.

Fp

[psw]

I don't get squeal, Fp

That's interesting...we had quite some debate whether the ebow, being independant of the guitar's electronics (having it's own pickup), solved problems we have with sustainers that used the guitar's pickups as the source....hmmmm...never did get an answer...have to think about this a little more...cheers

[Paul Marossy]

Cool work fp. I missed this thread somehow...

Anyhow, can I ask why the first two attempts didn't work out?

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

The first, WAY too many windings in the pickup coil, WAY too thick wire in the output coil. Squeal, too strong string vibration

Second, still too many windings in the pickup coil. Squeal.

Third, success.

PSW, you need to pot the coils, otherwise it will squeal.

Fp

[psw]

Yeah...potting's important...I've wound them with woodworking PVA and an outer layer of tape...

The squeel we get is from the interferance between the bridge pickup which is both the source for the driver and the output for the guitar. The solution is distance...the driver goes up near the neck...you'd get the same phenomenon if the driver and pickup coils were closer or facing each other or there was too much power...

Becaust the sustainer coil is so much larger and more power is required (although we still use preamped LM386's) the EMI is far greater. It's easier to drive one string from a mono source than it is to drive 6 sitrings from a mono source...but it does work...

Anyway...Fp...you asked:

I'd like to build one of those as well. On which page of the thread is the step by step tutorial?

Good question as the thread is now 57 pages long.... :shock:

So I located the first two installments on page 49...

I also got a little time to do installment 3 on page 57 and put a link on that post back to the first installments...here's a link to that then:
http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7512&pid=201531&st=840&#entry201531

So...at this stage the Driver/Pickup Combo looks like this...



This is a pasive single coil strat pickup with a driver on top housed in a hollowed out strat pickup cover...both the driver and pickup have survived the process and work well...this combo will replace the neck pickup of my strat providing a passive neck pickup just as before which the sustainer off...and a driver with the sustainer on...turned out kind of nice...

Sorry to hi-jack the thread Fp.... :oops:

[Paul Marossy]

The first, WAY too many windings in the pickup coil, WAY too thick wire in the output coil. Squeal, too strong string vibration

Second, still too many windings in the pickup coil. Squeal.

Third, success.

Very interesting. I wonder what affect the oversize wire on the output coil has? I guess it's a delicate balance on the number of windings, too...

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

oversize wire in the output coil means more turns in order to get the same DC resistance, so you end up with a more powerful driver.

Fp

[Paul Marossy]

Hmm... I thought it had something to do with DC resistance. But, smaller wire with less turns sure seems to be counterintutive!  I would have thought that it had to do with the number of turns, not wire gage.  :?

I remember one cat who succesfully built an ebow workalike, but he had problems with something burning up - I think it was the 386...

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

it does have to do with dc resistance. Thinner wire has more resistance, so you need less lenght to get the same resistance as thicker wire.

I remember one cat who succesfully built an ebow workalike, but he had problems with something burning up - I think it was the 386...

I take it that wasn't his successful build, I wouldn't call it a success if something was burning up!  :shock:

Fp

[Paul Marossy]

Thinner wire has more resistance

than thicker wire for the same amount of current. OK, I get it now.

take it that wasn't his successful build, I wouldn't call it a success if something was burning up!

Yeah, technically you're correct. His first couple of tries didn't work out, at least that is how I remember it.  :wink:

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

I think that's the guy who said he had used #22AWG wire... That's WAY too thick wire, if he really meant #22 he was lost. A good number to use could be (according to my calculations) #34. I used #38 because that's what I had (the other I had was #30 and that's too thick).

Anything between #34 and #38 will work on the output coil, at least in theory.

Fp

[Marcos - Munky]

Question: did you used a magnet for the coils?

[puretube]

The pole pieces of a guitar pickup, if I build a second one they will be 1/2 of a pole piece....

Fp

[Marcos - Munky]

Yeah, but are they magnetized?

[Fp-www.Tonepad.com]

I used steel pole pieces that are not magnetized and glued a small rare earth magnet from radio shack in the bottom. I think the orientation matters, as does the winding direction. I'd have to check to see what I did.

Of course one could use magnetized pole pieces, I think.

Fp