ijustwannamakestuff

Electronics

Courtesy of Make Magazine, this looks like it might be a great resource for a noob like me. I never got the opportunity to learn sciences or electronics at school so I’m working this stuff out as I go along, happily trying things until they work. Or don’t.

But blimey, if there isn’t a lot to learn.

I managed to get two piezos working on my guitar and tried it out on sunday, and it sounds great. I’ll be putting a write-up here soon in case anyone else has the same issues.

As for the in-ear-monitors, the preamp works great and last night I figured out how to get the limiter working which was pretty exciting. Again, write-up and images to follow.

guitar mk 1.0 from last week (via TheArtfulBadger)

This is the Flatbed pickup (the bridge) with a pot and a jack, before I had the bright idea of adding a second piezo under the neck.

So this is interesting - Jack in the second post suggests putting the piezos in series rather than in parallel.

I might need this

So the Flatbed pickup arrived and sounds great, the top and bottom E strings don’t sound as clear as the middle four but still a great purchase.  I emailed Ted himself and he suggested that it probably just needs fiddling with to get the best sound out of all the strings. Also the brass bridge bar needs notching.

I want to add a second disc piezo between the neck and the guitar but am having problems getting the two to work nicely together.

Stick them both in parallel to the jack and the volume drops significantly. The neck pickup is a bit quieter but they’re clearly interfering with each other. Put a pot in the mix and you get some really odd behaviour with the pot acting as an analogue switch. Confused I am.

Did try putting the neck pickup through the bread-boarded prototype of my headphone amp which works really well, but didn’t stop the pot acting weird. Pretty good basis for a pre-amp if I wanted one of them in the mix. I have some pics which I’ll get up at some stage.

via www.music-man.com

Momentum builds for making a guitar. Flatbed™ pickup still not arrived.

There’s a risk I may be building a guitar.