electric saw

[veganinme]

I was interested in constructing an amplified saw that i could then hook pedals up to. hmmm. any comments.

[Yun]

I was interested in constructing an amplified saw that i could then hook pedals up to. hmmm. any comments.

Haha, i saw a band that did that live in the 80's!  He mic'ed it. 

Here's how he did it:

Mic (male 1/4 plug on the out-put end)---->pedals---->amplifier/PA  Simple as that, man....

[petemoore]

  'Pound Cake'...Eddie used a drill to induce EMI into guitar pickups [operating the motor near the amplified pickups], the [processed sound of course] revving of the electric motor brush contacts can be heard on that track. Pickup demagnetization considerations were discussed, use 'undesirable for your guitar' magnetic pickups I guess.
  I could never get the drill to accellerate/deaccellerate slowlly enough, and lost interest before using the drill with a flywheel.
 

[tommy.genes]

Try cannibalizing the piezo speaker from a cheap electronic toy, an old computer or even one of those musical birthday cards. They are flat, wafer-thin discs with two leads coming out of them. They also work in reverse as contact microphones. Experiment with different mounting locations - such as out on the blade or at the joint between the blade and handle - to see which sounds the best while not interferring with your playing of the saw.

I'm guessing you will also need some sort of preamp / buffer in between the saw and the pedals, as well. Do a search in this forum for more information on those. Also search using the words "boost" or "booster".

-- T. G. --

[Peter Snowberg]

Try cannibalizing the piezo speaker from a cheap electronic toy, an old computer or even one of those musical birthday cards. They are flat, wafer-thin discs with two leads coming out of them. They also work in reverse as contact microphones.

+1 

You might  also want to consider wire brushes that short the output as the saw teeth come by just to crush the sound a bit more.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Was the original poster referring to a power saw, or the "musical" carpenter's hand saw?
If the latter, I'm thinking that mic would be best (but feedback prone) because contact mics on a steel object like this tend to pick up the 'wrong' harmonics.

[Wimpy]

http://www.pikatera.com/sahat_erikois.html

Those can sound as good as theremin imho. I got lots of Google hits when searching musical saw. I´ll say good mic is best for authentic tone