A crazy idea form me

[MovingInSloMo]

If it's been done already let me know.
Maybe hard to describe but I'll try

Effects boards you could slide/plug-in to a guitar, much like plugging a nintendo ROM (game cartridge board) into a nintendo system.They'd be board based, and you'd route the guitar accordingly. The PCBs would have onboard pins that fit into pin conectors, nintendo ROM style. I would say maybe 5 or 6 slots availible for effects, and I'd say for asthetic reasons you'd insert them through the back and maybe have a screw on or snap on cavity cover, and the controls would poke through the top... any thoughts? Stupid? Good? Do-able? I have no resources to do any of my crazy ideas which is why I'm throwing them out there (just please give credit?)

[12milluz]

Interesting, but I doubt we could fit our circuits into a Nintendo game cartridge! Now thats a tight enclosure!

[Solidhex]

I wouldn't be into any effects that I couldn't use different guitars with....

--Brad

[Boogdish]

isn't this what the electra guitar system was?

[miqbal]

If it's been done already let me know.
Maybe hard to describe but I'll try

Effects boards you could slide/plug-in to a guitar, much like plugging a nintendo ROM (game cartridge board) into a nintendo system.They'd be board based, and you'd route the guitar accordingly. The PCBs would have onboard pins that fit into pin conectors, nintendo ROM style. I would say maybe 5 or 6 slots availible for effects, and I'd say for asthetic reasons you'd insert them through the back and maybe have a screw on or snap on cavity cover, and the controls would poke through the top... any thoughts? Stupid? Good? Do-able? I have no resources to do any of my crazy ideas which is why I'm throwing them out there (just please give credit?)

yeah, sounds crazy to me

I can imagine I have a motherboard-sized PCB with four or five PCI-like slots for fxs child board... a modular fx system

[MovingInSloMo]

yea modular!

Another variation was "modules" or plastic boxed effects you connect via a plug system mounted on the face of the guitar...like banana plugs, sort of like plugging a wall wart into a wall outlet... similar to the dan armstrong effect, but with the ability to add more than one at once

[soulsonic]

I like the plugin cartridge idea, but I would prefer it in a pedalboard kind of thing. Like a modular pedalboard where there's slots and each slot has three or four generic control knobs that act as the controls for whatever effect would be in the slot. Basically, it would have to be designed from the ground up as a series of generic modules with generic slots. I think it could be really interesting. I imagine a row of slots where the cartridge would plug straight in, like how it is on an Atari or a Genesis. It would be a row of slots, then a row of knobs, and then a row of footswitches to turn them on and off. It's alot like R.G. Keen's modular pedalboard idea, except it's just kinda going in a different tangent with the cartridge thing.

[Mark F]

isn't this what the electra guitar system was?

Yes! That's exactly what the ELECTRA Guitars were in the '70's. I still have the Flanger Module somewhere. They were pretty cool at the time. I don't know exactly when they went under.

[ambulancevoice]

http://www.rivercityamps.com/electra/modules.php

[Solidhex]

That electra site is rad.

--Brad

[greigoroth]

I've been thinking a lot about modular stuff lately, but I don't know if guitarists would want it! Line 6 made a bunch of pedals in the Tone Core series that got rave reviews soundwise, but as far as I know they have not sold well at all. I think that deep down we are a conservative bunch that pretty much hate everything and anything remotely new 

[miqbal]

http://www.rivercityamps.com/electra/modules.php

[ayayay!]

Line 6 made a bunch of pedals in the Tone Core series that got rave reviews soundwise, but as far as I know they have not sold well at all.

Same with those Randall preamp modules.  People like them, but they just don't catch on. 

It's kinda like saying, "I'm gonna design a really cool magazine clip for a handgun.  ...Now go design a gun and hope you like it."

[SISKO]

http://geofex.com/Article_Folders/FXbus/fxbus.htm

[sevenisthenumber]

Check these out. There different than modules but they sound great!

http://store.guitarfetish.com/modboards.html

[MovingInSloMo]

I had a suspicion someone in the 70's did something like this. The era of groovy guitar wackyness.

I do like the pedalboard concept.

and I like this whole brainstorm session type thing. Breeds unique ideas

[drewl]

Yeah, I'm gonna hack up my PRS, Les Pauls and 60's SG's to shove effects in them
It would have to all be SMD for size reasons.
Got to work on an Egnator module amp recently which sounded extremely good.

[soulsonic]

http://geofex.com/Article_Folders/FXbus/fxbus.htm

Yeah, that's the article I was making reference to.

[Baktown]

I played with a guy in the late 70's who had one of these Electra guitars with the plug in modules.  It was a Les Paul copy, and it was a really nice playing guitar, but as I recall, the modules were pretty expensive and didn't sound all that great.

Rick