Transduced guitar = endless sustain

[petemoore]

   Thank You for making new fun with an old guitar !

[Paul Marossy]

So far, with this guitar, not so good. The fingerboard is pretty dead for the thin non-wound strings.

Yeah, I had the same problem when I made mine. It was fun for a little while, but I want a fretless electric guitar that is designed to be one from the ground up. It seems a lot harder to make a good sounding & playing fretless electric guitar than it is to make a fretted bass into a fretless bass. I mean it worked fine for Jaco Pastorius.  

Maniac Music calls vibrating a guitar with a transducer "electro-acoustic sustain." On the stompbox it says "acoustic feedback sustainer."

I think saying it is "electro-acoustic" is a stretch. I guess you could say that if it is electronically picking up the "acoustic" vibration caused by it shaking the headstock of your guitar.  

[kvb]

For a fretless guitar to work well the neck has to be very hard. I checked out the Vigier. I think they said they're using metal. I found another company that is using glass. (fretlessguitar.com) I've also seen some youtube vids of a guy playing a neck that was glass and perfectly flat. He also used a sustainer pickup.

I think saying it is "electro-acoustic" is a stretch. 

Yeah, that probably just sounds more complicated than "mechanical sustainer" and, much better than "guitar vibrator."

[DougH]

Yeah, that probably just sounds more complicated than "mechanical sustainer" and, much better than "guitar vibrator."

Ooooh Baby! Play that Van Halen solo again! and again...and again...  

Maybe play with the word "resonance"? Reso-feedbacker or something? Or maybe Guitar Shaker or Shake-n-Baker or something like that.

I think it's a very cool idea. I like the "clip on" idea too. You could experiment with putting it on different areas of the guitar. And multiple transducers is a good idea too.

Edit: Haha! I just realized you are the creator of the "Boubombilzoo". I love that thing! Very creative.

[joegagan]

about 5 years ago, when i had cable, there was a tv show competition "america's best unknown guitarist" or some name like that, the guy who won one year was playing a fretless. anyone else recall this?

he was playing a fairly typical guitar shreddy melodiccy song, but sliding the chords around sounded pretty cool. and the judges liked the innovation/novelty factor, so he won.

problem was, about 37% of his notes were badly out of tune. i would not have given him the win, go home and get it in tune first haha.

[DougH]

Kevin, you convinced me. I ordered a couple pairs of those transducers. I'm going to experiment around with this myself. Very cool idea!

[DougH]

I'm wondering- is there some way a clamping arrangement might work with this? I was thinking of trying some C-clamps (when my tranducers come in). That way it would be less of a "permanent" arrangement.

[Paul Marossy]

I'm wondering- is there some way a clamping arrangement might work with this? I was thinking of trying some C-clamps (when my tranducers come in). That way it would be less of a "permanent" arrangement.

There might be a way. Check out the Sustainiac Model C, I think it does something similar - http://www.sustainiac.com/model-b.htm

[DougH]

Yes, that looks promising then. Thanks!

I like the XLR idea too, to get in/out of the floor box and minimize wiring to the guitar. I was thinking of putting the amp in a tiny box and mounting it on the back of the transducer on the guitar. Then use a Y-cable out of the guitar. But then you wouldn't have a way of sticking a dirt pedal between the guitar and amp to drive the transducer. Hmmm...

[DougH]

But then you wouldn't have a way of sticking a dirt pedal between the guitar and amp to drive the transducer. Hmmm...

Then again you might not need to if there's enough gain in the amp. (Just thought of that- no I don't usually reply to myself...) The idea is just to get the neck vibrating anyway. Got my transducers yesterday. Now where's that LM386 I have lying around...

[Paul Marossy]

Now where's that LM386 I have lying around...

I believe that RadioShack still sells them.  

[DougH]

Now where's that LM386 I have lying around...

I believe that RadioShack still sells them.  

Aww, that means I have to get off my butt and drive to the store. Never mind, I changed my mind. I'm not doing this... Where's that bag of potato chips and the tv remote?   

[Paul Marossy]

Now where's that LM386 I have lying around...

I believe that RadioShack still sells them.  

Aww, that means I have to get off my butt and drive to the store. Never mind, I changed my mind. I'm not doing this... Where's that bag of potato chips and the tv remote?   

Wow, you sound like me! 

[Brymus]

Darn I want to try this too,sounds really cool.
I like the clip on idea of using two outa phase.
How about replacing the middle PU with a transducer,or better yet mount ot right after the last fret so it can vibrate the ax better?
Oh I know mount it to the back of the bridge where the whammy springs attach.That would shake it up real good.

[Quackzed]

what about mounting a few on a trem block of a spring loaded tremolo bridge... free to vibrate, but will vibrate the other strings as well, but at the played note frequency... hmmm might be cool... other sympathetic harmonics of the other strings would appear as amplitude goes up?
seems like a trem that is already balanced between springs and strings on a knife edge would be the winner as far as being a system that is ready to resonate! wires to piezos would be added damping, though if coiled could have less damping effect.

[Brymus]

Yeah what I meant is what Quacked said much better way.
Thanks Quacked   

[Nalo1022]

I was actually thinking of something almost exactly like this at work today! Thanks for doing all the hard work for me. By any chance did you try the transducer on the body? I would think since there is more mass you would need to get some pretty strong vibration going into the guitar, but then again you might be able to get a very subtle sustain out of it that way. Awesome project and I really dig the look of the transducer on the headstock.

[DougH]

I got my transducers in a few days ago and started playing with this last night. I don't want to glue this to my guitar so I'm going to try something a little different. I had a piece of scrap wood lying around, an old piece of a privacy fence slat. It's pretty thin pressure-treated material. It resonated really good with the transducer on it. I held the whole mess up on the headstock of my cheapie Strat and it seemed to work pretty well. I didn't rig up a Y cable and plug the guitar in, and it was freaky to hear it sustaining and blooming with octaves just in the air. I'm going to try gluing the transducer to the wood, then clamping that to the guitar. I think having a larger area that vibrates really helps. This will allow me to try different positions on the guitar too. Incidentally I held the transducer against the body of my Hamer and it seemed to work really well. So there are other sweet spots than just the headstock. The back of the neck would be ideal, but I don't know how you would mount something there.

I've got the simple Little Gem Mk I with input buffer on my breadboard and it seems to work pretty good so far. After the mounting gets worked out I can decide whether it is good enough for this purpose or if it will require upgrading to the Mk II. I was thinking of putting it in a tiny enclosure and mounting it on the wood too. Then it's just a matter of running a short cable from a Y-connector coming out of the guitar, up the back of the body/neck to the box on the headstock.

[Quackzed]

i wonder if a 10 watt chip amp would be overkill
really get that sucker ringing! or even a distortion box in front, i mean its not as if a solid body is gonna let a high e stay a pretty sine wave through all that wood anyhow...

[DougH]

In my experience so far it would be way overkill. Even the Little Gem Mk I drives this transducer pretty well.