Effects Inside Guitars...

studiostud · October 03, 2009, 02:41:03 AM

I know this is a little outside the boundaries of the "stompbox" forum... but I've been toying with the idea of mounting an effect inside the electronics cavity of a guitar. I do have pretty limited space in the cavity and so wouldn't have room for most modulation effects or effects that utilize more than 1 or 2 knobs. Frankly, I wouldn't want something overly complicated anyway. I was just wondering what circuits you think would work...? Clean Boost? Fuzz Circuit? I was toying with the idea of the Orange Treble/Bass Booster circuit with just a Vol pot and using trimpots for the other settings and just tweak to taste. I guess my biggest concern is that I would want something that would be more or less universally accepted in front of "any" effects chain.

What other ideas do you guys have?

Jeff

MarcoMike · October 03, 2009, 07:21:12 AM

Hey, I have done a couple of effect-guitars for friends... one of them plays in a Muse tribute band... (guess which guitar is its one...)
efen if I think I posted these already...

in this picture it is not finished... but I forgot to take pictures after... the battery goes in the central pickup cavity, for a very industrial look, as this guy likes.

and this one has that infamous fuzz in it. 5 pots, 1 on/off switch and pickup selector switch.

personally, I wouldn't know which effect to put into a guitar... I prefer to have them on the floor.
but something like a compressor/booster... or, as in the guitars I made, some noismakers you want to control by hand ... that could be something useful onboard.

tref_h · October 03, 2009, 08:16:47 AM

I'd say boosts or tone networks were the way forward, if at all.

I've seen people put anything up to 20dB of boost in their guitars, which I'd say was excessive.

Stranger things I've seen include compressors and expanders.

I think other than a bit of boost I'd keep it on the floor/in the rack, and to be honest I personally don't like guitars that need batteries. There's enough can go wrong already...

MarcoMike · October 03, 2009, 08:32:28 AM

what about a parapedal circuit as tone control?

studiostud · October 03, 2009, 01:25:00 PM

Quote from: tref_h on October 03, 2009, 08:16:47 AM
and to be honest I personally don't like guitars that need batteries. There's enough can go wrong already...

That is a very good point. That was actually going to be the next forum topic I was going to research. Figuring out a way to keep the battery from powering the circuit and draining unless the switch is on even though I don't have a TRS in/out jack to send the battery ground to.

tref_h · October 03, 2009, 02:17:31 PM

How about swapping the standard 1/4" jack for an XLR 3pin and wiring a lower voltage variation on phantom power? 48v is probably way more than you need, but you could go lower like 9v, 12v say?

It would still leave you needing a mic lead instead of a regular guitar lead, but that owuld be a much less traumatic emergency on stage if a lead broke than suddenly having to switch from your favorite guitar cos the battery had died... You'd need to build a power supply/line box to insert at the front of your signal chain.

MarcoMike · October 03, 2009, 02:30:34 PM

u can just use a stereo jack to switch the power off when the cable is disconnected...

Brymus · October 03, 2009, 04:10:53 PM

There is a company doing this already.
They are using SMD components (I think) and push pull pots to keep the knob count down.
http://store.guitarfetish.com/modboards.html
They call them mod boards,I had this idea about a year ago and then after a little research
I quickly found out it had already been done.

Scott674 · October 03, 2009, 04:27:54 PM

I've been wanting to do this as well. Paul Marossy has an article or two up about it over at http://www.diyguitarist.com/

I've been wondering about power switching myself. I figured a DPDT switch for true bypass, that way if the battery dies then you still can play on without the effect. I'm not sure if I want to try to get a stereo jack into the guitar, so I've been thinking about a 2nd switch for the battery, so that it's not constantly draining, even when you're not playing. Turn it on when you pickup the guitar, and turn it off when you're done. If you turn the power switch off and on while playing, you'll end up with some bad pops...

EDIT: I would likely put a boost in, although seeing the Muse guitar makes me think about doing a fuzz. I've got a germanium fuzz that doesn't play nice with buffers, so it's got to sit at the front of my effects chain anyways.....

Ice-9 · October 03, 2009, 05:12:08 PM

What about a wah effect, you could use your pinky finger to control the pot the same way you can control it to do volume swells.

tref_h · October 03, 2009, 06:35:13 PM

Using a (stereo) TRS 1/4" jack would be *much* simpler and cheaper but would still leave you with a battery in the guitar, and wouldn't help anyone who often puts a guitar back on the stand still plugged in. Phantom power is an extreme solution, but it's a good one if you can afford it.

If I was going to put actives inside a guitar that I wanted to be able to switch off, I'd probably go with a push-push pot setup as true-bypass to kick the cct in/out and stick a small DPDT and status LED on there somewhere for power rather than mucking about with any alternative jacks. Battery changes would be a potential issue if you didn't have back-loading electronics or you didn't want to hack a lump out of the back and sink a proper lidded battery box in there. An awful lot depends on the style of guitar you have and how visibly you want to alter it.

Packing too many controls into a small space pretty much guarantees you'll hardly ever use them because they're fiddly, so you could think about which controls you'll never alter and make them skeleton presets on the PCB, maybe? Or if you have that back cover, you could even drill some holes so you could get a tweaking driver in there... I'm not sure pinky-wah would work out for most normal wah styles...

I still basically stand by that outboard electronics are way more player-friendly, versatile and useful though than onboard can ever be.

jacobyjd · October 03, 2009, 06:50:39 PM

I'm thinking of putting some goodies into one of my guitars--why not run a TRS cable into your guitar, where the ring delivers the +9v from a breakout box on your board? Use a stereo cable and you're golden--no battery necessary.

FiveseveN · October 03, 2009, 07:39:13 PM

Yup, that's what I've been using for a couple of years now (only I run it on 12V regulated). And if for some reason you can't or don't want to take your pedalboard along you can make another cable with a 9V battery attached. Or you can just take the power supply/breakout but that still ties you to mains.

Mark Hammer · October 03, 2009, 07:43:13 PM

It is now 30 years since I published the article shown here: http://hammer.ampage.org/files/Device1-12.PDF
I still stand by it. The thing to keep in mind about on-board effects is that unless you have a means to completely bypass them, they will always be on first. So think long and hard abut yu want to always be on first in the sequence. This is why many will recommend something like a simple clean boost, or basic EQ.

jacobyjd · October 03, 2009, 07:45:30 PM

Quote from: Mark Hammer on October 03, 2009, 07:43:13 PM
It is now 30 years since I published the article shown here: http://hammer.ampage.org/files/Device1-12.PDF
I still stand by it. The thing to keep in mind about on-board effects is that unless you have a means to completely bypass them, they will always be on first. So think long and hard abut yu want to always be on first in the sequence. This is why many will recommend something like a simple clean boost, or basic EQ.

I'm definitely leaning toward a wah or something similar.

petemoore · October 03, 2009, 07:56:16 PM

Joe Gagan did a video of his 'Tele-ToneControl-Wah'.
Very interesting and convincing wah sound using only passives.

frank_p · October 03, 2009, 09:06:06 PM

Quote from: jacobyjd on October 03, 2009, 06:50:39 PM
I'm thinking of putting some goodies into one of my guitars--why not run a TRS cable into your guitar, where the ring delivers the +9v from a breakout box on your board? Use a stereo cable and you're golden--no battery necessary.

I just repaired an EBS OctaBass for a friend and it has phantom power option on the stereo jack. It is on the middle segment of the stereo jack (Is that what is called ring ?). I have no idea if that is an already "accepted" convention or it's only for EBS stompboxes. On the side of the case it is written with a drawing: " EBS Phantom Connection ".

The mid boost in my active strat is very usefull, I use it most of the time. The only thing is if you're playing a lot in a bands-shows, having only one battery in the guitar and no LED indicator for a dying battery, it can be annoying and stressing. What I will probably do is put two batteries in the guitar with a switch, and also a LED indicator for knowing if it's time to switch to the other battery. (Do a search there is some posts here about the LED indicator).

Not having any other means to know if your battery is still good and having to pull out the screwdriver for removing the retaining plate is just a good recipe for waist of time. A couple of weeks ago I had a practice and I was sure my battery was dying because the volume was dropping and some weird distortion appeared. So: Searched for patch connection problems for a while, changed the battery, reconnect, nothing better happens. Finally it was one of my 3pdt that had bad contacts in it (Thanks Mark H. for telling how to clean them). All that to say that having a guitar with no status LED or backup battery inside an active guitar (or better: both of them) is just a week link in the chain of Murphy's law (or strong link should I say): nothing of what you want in a gigging situation.

Paul Marossy · October 03, 2009, 10:19:18 PM

I built a Maestro Boomerang wah circuit into one of my guitars with a true bypass switch. I use it as a kind on on-board "Q" filter. Honestly, I don't use it that much. It was cool to figure out how to make it all work and stuff, and is a novel idea. But in everyday life, I don't really use it much.

amptramp · October 03, 2009, 11:13:50 PM

A lot of guitarists use a transmitter link so they have the freedom to roam the stage and this would be eliminated if they were tied to a stompbox. If they use effects, they have to be built into the guitar. (BTW, I haven't seen much discussion of transmitter links - is there another forum for this?)

It seems you can always find a variant of many acoustic and some electric guitars with an internal preamp and many of these have a three-band graphics equalizer. This offers a low output impedance to drive long cables or any unbuffered effects (like a Vox Cry Baby wah pedal) that may overload an unamplified pickup. But the problem is the power source - a battery is OK but it has to be recharged or replaced frequently and can die during a gig. You could bring in external power, but it can be cumbersome and eliminates the benefits of a transmitter link.

There was a thread a while back about the Norman Greenbaum "Spirit In The Sky" fuzz that came from a germanium transistor distortion circuit in his Telecaster. The problem with some of the distortion circuits is that they are temperature-sensitive and require controls to set the bias properly, since they are effectively mis-biased amplifiers. Would these be subject to less temperature change in the guitar or in a stompbox? Probably the stompbox. Basic preamps or effects which do not require controls (like the auto-wah or the volume-dependent high-frequency boost shown in Penfold's book) may be added with minimal disturbance to the appearance of the guitar, but would you want to add the three pots used for a tube screamer?

There isn't a yes/no answer to adding effects in a guitar. It is a question of whether you want to live with the compromises.

mac · October 04, 2009, 03:17:46 AM

This circuit was inside my first crappy guitar. It's a GE fuzz that can be controlled with the guitar volume like FF.
Harry up 'cause geocities is shutting down and I don't plan to move schems to another site anytime soon

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=51210.0

mac

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