Guitar Foot Controller Uses DSP For Audio Effects

November 30, 2012 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

guitar-pedal-dsp1

This a screenshot taken from [Pierre’s] demonstration of an electric guitar effects pedal combined with DSP and Pure Data. He pulls this off by connecting the guitar directly to the computer, then feeds the computer’s audio output to the guitar amp.

The foot controls include a pedal and eight buttons, all monitored by an Arduino. Pure Data, a visual programming language, interprets the input coming from the Arduino over USB and alters the incoming audio using digital signal processing. [Pierre] manages the audio connection using the JACK Audio Connection Kit software package.

In the video after the break he’s using a laptop for most of the work, but he has also managed to pull this off with a Raspberry Pi. There’s no audio input on the RPi board, but he’s been using a USB sound card anyway. The other USB port connects the Arduino and he’s in business.

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Glockentar: A Guitar + Glockenspiel Mashup

November 28, 2012 by Eric Evenchick 7 Comments

This unique electronic instrument combines a chopped up guitar and a hacked apart glockenspiel with an Arduino. [Aaron]’s Glockentar consists of guitar hardware and glockenspiel keys mounted to a wood body. Solenoids placed above the keys actuate metal rods to play a note.

Under the hood, an Arduino connects the pieces. The conductive pick closes a circuit, which is a digital input into the Arduino. This actuates the corresponding solenoid to play the glockenspiel key, and sends a character to a computer over serial.

On the computer, an openFrameworks based program creates lighting that is projected onto each string. MadMapper is used for projection mapping, which maps the openFrameworks output to each string. Video is passed between applications using the Syphon framework.

[Aaron] has provided a write up that goes into details, including the Arduino and openFrameworks source for the project. There’s also a video overview and demo of the Glockentar after the break.

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Steam-powered Pickup Winder

November 12, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

[Valve Child] has been building a few three-string cigar box guitars. Of course he’ll need a few pickups, but three-string guitar pickups aren’t exactly easy to come by. To solve this problem, he’s built a guitar pickup winder powered by a steam engine.

The pickup winder is powered by a Wilesco D20 model steam engine, connected to the actual winding mechanism via a rubber belt. To the right of the bobbin bracket is a mechanism built out of Meccano – Erector sets for us americans – that provides a mechanical counter for the number of wire turns and a wire traverse to keep each layer of wire somewhat even across the width of the bobbin.

Previously, we’ve seen [Valve Child]’s really sweet sounding lap steel build from a log using a hand-wound pickup and a preamp tube as the bridge. It’s questionable if the guitar signal came from this lap steel via the pickup or the microphonic tube, but now [Valve Child] has a really, really good method of improving his pickup production abilities.

Video after the break.

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Log Guitar Uses Tube As A Bridge, Actually Is The Blues

September 12, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 8 Comments

In the never ending quest to replicate the tone of depression-era blues records, [Valve Child] managed to build the most backwoods guitar ever seen.

The body of [Valve Child]’s slide guitar was taken from the limb of a red gum tree felled during a wind storm. After taking a chainsaw, router, and sander to the guitar, [Valve] sealed it with linseed oil.

The real beauty of this build comes from the bridge and electronics: the pickup is made from six stacks of magnets encased in hot glue and wound with enamel wire. The bridge of the guitar is actually made from a 6GM8 dual triode. Not only does this provide the guitar with a wonderful brassy sound, the tube serves as a wonderful low-tech preamp when powered by a 6 volt battery.

The three strings on the guitar are tuned DAD, perfect for the likes of [Robert Johnson], or, for the younger kids, [Jack White]. Surprisingly, [Valve Child]’s guitar actually sounds really good. as heard in the video demo after the break.

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[Jeri Ellsworth] On Making Her C64 Bass Keytar

July 9, 2012 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

[Jeri Ellsworth] finally set aside some time to talk about the build process for her Commodore 64 bass keytar. We think what started by taking a band saw to the guitar body ended up as a fantastic new instrument.

When she was showing off the project at Maker Faire we really only got a cursory look at what it could do. Her most recent video covers all that went into pulling off the project. Once the bulk of the guitar body was gone she tore the guts out of a dead c64 in order to mate the case with the guitar neck. Always the craftsman, she altered the computer’s badge to preserve the iconic look, then went to work adding pickups to each string using piezo sensors. This was done with Maker Faire in mind because magnetic pickups would have been unreliable around all of the tesla coils one might find at the event. These were amplified and filtered before being processed via an FPGA which connects to the original c64 SID 6581 chip.

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New And Improved Potentar

June 18, 2012 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

We like what we’re seeing and hearing with [Dorian Damon’s] newest version of the Potentar. This is revision 2.0 of the instrument we saw in a December links post. He calls it the Potentar, since it uses a linear potentiometer in a way similar to how the frets on a guitar work (Potentiometer + Guitar = Potentar).

The first thing you should notice is the case upgrade. The original used what looked like unfinished scrap wood, but finished wood of this case really makes the thing look like a traditional instrument. With this design he loses the Arduino in favor of a standalone ATmega328 chip. You’ll notice knobs and a switch on the face of the body. This allows for selecting a couple different kinds of scales and turning the power off. The linear potentiometer and sewing machine button are the same as before. After the break you can catch his description and a quick performance thanks to the audio jack for patching it into an amp.

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The Dronitar; A Scrap Made Motorized Sitar

June 1, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

This peculiar instrument, called the Dronitar, is completely made from scrap. Interestingly, it sounds pretty good. You can hear the dronitar in action in the video after the break.The call this a “2 stringed” instrument,and most who are instrumentally savvy will find a bit of confusion here. They are referring to the string that you play as well as a small string that is struck against the other by a motor to create the droning effect. The result sounds very much like a sitar mixed with a bit of surfer rock styling. You’ll note that they’re even using a second motor as the pickup!

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