Homemade Ebow?

[NaBo]

Anyone make or mod one?  

I was just making beautiful noises with my expensive store-bought one and was curious...

Or has anyone ever cracked theirs open... (by accident, of course  :wink:) and say... taken a picture of its guts?
I'm pretty sure theres no schematics online...  but... just thinking of certain cool things to do... thats all...  

[bwanasonic]

This has come up a number of times before. Aside from the mechanism that sets the strings vibrating, there is also the ergonomic and physical aspects that would be impractical to reproduce. Those little channel/ ridges on the bottom of the ebow are key for many ebow techniques. And getting something that fit in your hand and still allowed precise string to string movement would be quite a feat for the average DIYer. I also don't consider the Ebow expensive for such a valuable tool. Have you ever priced actual violin bows?  :wink:

Kerry M

[Alex C]

I asked this once.  Read this thread.

Alex

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

A diy ebow is a big ask.
One thing though if you get a store one, one of my customers had me make a variable power supply & variable series resistor for it, he felt that(for him) it played 'just right' when the battery was slightly flat.
I wouldn't go above 10 V though.

[NaBo]

thanks paul, that was sorta one of the things i had in mind...  running it with a different power supply... hmmm... *strokes beard*

Edit:  as for the making of one, im sure someone out there has done it... and its not absolutely necessary for it to be small and held by the picking hand either - i already bought one!  im envisioning things like maybe sustain-on-a-stand things that you just inch your guitar up to...  i dunno.  google for "homemade ebow" and there's some tour diary where the guy reports seeing someone playing a piano string stretched wall to wall with some sort of homemade ebow...  kinda cool.

[bioark]

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

good bye

[NaBo]

NICE bioark.  very cool site.  thank you

for the benefit of anyone else who might be going through every language in babelfish - its dutch ...  some of the words dont translate but you can make sense of it pretty well

[airhole]

Talking about bows, this is not an electronically driven bow, but you guys migh wanna just check it out.

http://www.piranhaguitarbow.com/

cheers,
george

[Paul Marossy]

im envisioning things like maybe sustain-on-a-stand things that you just inch your guitar up to

That's an interesting concept. I think I might like that idea, but I'm betting that it would be difficult to institute...  

[idlefaction]

can't remember who but some time ago (years ago i think) there was a post someone did with the maths involved in vibrating a guitar string;  i think they worked out you needed a hundred or so volts p-p of output to use a regular guitar pickup, and it would demagnetise the pickup pretty quickly at the same time.  you could theoreticlly get this with a step-up transformer tho.

i think it was RG but it might have been Mark Hammer...  it was pre-phpbb tho so maybe not available any more.

but, there was also talk of pulling the cone off a 6" car stereo woofer and just putting the magnet bit in your guitar between the neck and bridge humbuckers (you ARE playing a PRS, right?) which apparently works great too with just an LM386;  probably what that dutch page was trying to impress upon us.  car stereo speaker with cone pulled out == berspijkkenradiottj ;-)

or you could be oldskool and press your headstock against your amp...

[bwanasonic]

Edit:  as for the making of one, im sure someone out there has done it... and its not absolutely necessary for it to be small and held by the picking hand either - i already bought one!  im envisioning things like maybe sustain-on-a-stand things that you just inch your guitar up to...

I see. You are just speaking generally about the sutaining aspects of the Ebow. That is only one part of what an Ebow can do, but I see what you mean. In general terms, maybe the Fernandes sustainer would be better to model for what you are talking about.  

Kerry M

[ExpAnonColin]

Since we're on the topic:

Why can't you take your guitar pickup as "input coil", put the LM386 in a stompbox and connect it to a handheld output coil with cord?

You can. The cabling gets really messy, but you can make that work.

The latest incarnation of these things is the idea you flirted with but didn't quite make it to - on a dual pickup guitar, why not make one pickup the input coil, and one the output coil. That in fact works almost.

The "almost" is that the output coil has to have few turns of thick(er) wire to do the job correctly, and that makes it have low output as a pickup. So the arrangement that works is one stock pickup at the bridge as the input, a modified low-turns pickup at the neck as an output device, and a high gain preamp to bring up the neck pickup signal when it's used as an input.

Hmmm? How many turns on the neck pickup? A couple of hundred, #24 or so, I believe as a guess.

What if you had a 3 pickup guitar?  Bridge for input coil, neck for output coil (seems like the closest to the 24th fret hot spot) and center pickup for output to 1/4" jack coil.  Then just mount the LM386 in the guitar.

-Colin

[Johnny Guitar]

im envisioning things like maybe sustain-on-a-stand things that you just inch your guitar up to...  i dunno.

I think we are dealing with very small magnetic fields here. I think that magnetic fields are one of those C/r^2 (and I think C = 1) phenomena.

What I mean is that since the field is so small that you'd need to be a lot closer than to "just inch your guitar up to" -- I think we're talking fractions of an inch. If you have a really powerful magnetic field you'd have to have some exotic anti-feedback circuitry to prevent *meltdowns* or some such badness when you got too close to the apparatus (or even if it was too close to itself  :roll: ) .

This topic is a very cool one though. I asked Bart Hopkin (of Experimental Musical Instruments magazine and CD fame) about this kind of thing a few years ago and he didn't even know how an E-Bow worked at that time. It seems like a lot of good work could come out of a thorough understanding of what is involved here.

J

[Paul Marossy]

I have come to the conclusion that the Sustainiac or Fernandes Sustainer systems are the best way to go. It's really not that expensive to buy one to mod a guitar with. Easier still is to just buy a Fernandes or Jackson guitar that already has a built-in sustainer system in it.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Good to see the name Bart Hopkin come up! someone who has done a hell of a lot for the experimental music scene (even including guitars  :wink: ).
A subtle point to the ebow is that it has a magnet in it, think of it as a pickup in reverse. If you take a few inches of coathanger wire, you can put it on an ebow & it sounds by itself.

[bwanasonic]

I'd really like to try the Fernandes system, but I just wanted to emphasize that the Ebow is, in a sense a whole seperate technique, much like slide. It's not just the sustaining effect. The mechanical aspect of of using the Ebow literally as a bow is a major factor. I wouldn't look at it as Ebow VS. Sustainiac. It's two seperate techniques. A good example of what I mean is the arpeggio effect you get by raking an Ebow in a circular pattern across the strings while holding a chord with your fretting hand. That, and being able to vary the distance of the Ebow *vertically* from the strings for a wide range of dynamic effects. Of course the Fernandes system has it's own unique range of effects as well. I hope to have both at some point   And for what it's worth - I like fresh batteries in my Ebow :wink:

Kerry M

[NaBo]

the fernandes sustainer IS pretty sweet.  one day, when i have a guitar thats good enough to sound good
with it, but not so good that i'd be afraid to route the mother out, i'll have to invest in one.

anyways, don't get me wrong here, i adore my ebow and its versatility, it's taken a HUGE part in my playing
over the years...  but imagine an ebow-like sustainer that either clamps onto your guitar at the right
alignment and height, or that you bring your guitar up to (perhaps rest the body in a little holder, with
little padded spacers to get the right distance from the strings)... you know, mid-song... and it sustains
all six strings at once. then you just mute the strings you dont want to sound in front of the device with
your picking hand and fret away.  ah the beautiful swell of ebow-ed chords, how i long for thee.  not
to mention, preserving the integrity of your lovely gibson sg!  well, actually, my lovely gibson sg.

essentially a hands-free, 6 string ebow that you can just "lock into" on a whim.  plus, it LOOKS
like you're doing something innovative and cool onstage!!!  ... ah well... a man can dream, no?

[Marcos - Munky]

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

good bye

Cool, but which language is this?

[Arno van der Heijden]

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

good bye

Cool, but which language is this?

It's Dutch (Flemish actually)

[Alex C]

Last night I couldn't get to sleep, and I was lying in bed thinking about the Ebow and this thread (though that was not the reason for my not sleeping- what do you think I am, a nerd? I only lose sleep pondering R.G.'s "Technology of..." articles and cascaded JFET gain stages ), and I was thinking about what Paul Perry had said about the coat hanger wire.  Here's my question (note: I'm not even going to pretend this is a normal thing to contemplate in the quiet hours before slumber):

Suppose there exists a circuit (normal 9v effect or high-voltage amplifier) which contains a component with a long, exposed lead.  Could the Ebow be used to induce vibration in said lead, and if so, what, if anything, would happen?  I turned this over and over in my mind, and couldn't come to a conclusion.  Would a vibrating/oscillating (that's probably the wrong use of the term) component lead have any effect on the signal passing through?  Is there a certain place in the circuit where this would be most notable?  

I know these are lame things to think about,  and I'm asking under the protection of the unwritten forum rules "We're here to learn," and "there are no stupid questions."

Alex