Single String Servo Electric Guitar

September 28, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

its a catchy tune!

Ah, we love musical hacks that actually play music. [Mike Baxter] is back again with a new servo electric guitar. This one, called the physical string synthesizer, and has only one string. He’s using two Arduinos to control the unit. One to change the midi file to a note within the string’s limits and the second to actually control the servo. It seems like that could be simplified a little bit, but we’re pretty sure his end goal was to build an instrument quickly, not learn to be a circuit ninja. Last time we saw Mike Baxter, he had built a servo electric guitar that used a keypad for control. You can see a video of the single string one after the break.

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Shovel…guitar?

September 4, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 53 Comments

We didn’t believe this hack at all when we saw it, or rather heard it. Surly a guitar made out of a shovel couldn’t sound decent. But the video (after the jump, skip to 2:40 for the jam) to our untrained ears sounded pretty rad. Could be the supremely well done wood work, proper use of tools, high tech pickups, or maybe Russian magic, we don’t know.

In fact, if you continue the video it doesn’t stop there. The creators also made a 2 string bass and a few other instruments from shovels. Do I smell a new shovel hero?

Related: Guitars made out of things that should not be guitars.

[Thanks Paul]

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Guitar Effect Shield For Maple

July 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Okie] designed this audio effect shield for Maple. You’ll remember that Maple is a prototyping system built around an ARM processor, so there’s plenty of power and speed under the hood. First and foremost, the shield provides input and output filters to keep noise out of the system. From there a set of potentiometers let you change the effect, with the manipulation like echo, distortion, and ring modulation happening in the firmware.

Shred Air With Theremin Hero

July 13, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 16 Comments

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBhOB7CfUoY%5D

Remember those Ebay auctions of air guitars going for several thousands of dollars? We don’t either, but Theremin Hero (more info in the YouTube description) is about as legit as you can get to actually rocking on nothing but air.

Much like using a theremin to control Mario, the vertical antenna acts as the fret board while the horizontal one detects strumming. Combine the output of the theremin with some custom software (yet to be released) and Guitar Hero and you have Theremin Hero Air Guitar.

[via Bob’s House of Video Games]

Audible Tuner For The Blind

June 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Lain Sharp] modified this guitar tuner so it can be used by his blind friend. In the picture above you can make out a small white project box that houses the additional electronics. Inside is another battery and an ATmega168 providing a connection for an earphone. The AVR chip connects to each LED on the tuner and converts the visual tuning meter to an audio cue. Check out the demonstration clip after the break to see how it works.

Now if we could just figure out how to get our strings in tune with our built-in keyboard.

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Audio Breakout Box For MacBook Pro

June 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

[Billy] wanted to use the audio connector on his MacBook Pro for input and output at the same time. He knew it could be done because Apple sells headphones with built-in microphones that work with the computer. He set out to build a breakout box so that he could connect the components of his choice to the single port. Using a scart-RCA adaptor box he scrapped the scart plug and wired the RCA jacks to the Apple headphone wires. He can now patch the pickup of his guitar to the mic connector, send it through the MacBook, and run the output back to his guitar amp.

Embedding An Accelerometer And XBee In A Guitar

May 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

[JP Carrascal] hacked his guitar by adding motion control while removing the need for wires. He’s using a dual-Arduino system with an Mini Pro inside the guitar and a Duemilanova for the receiver connected to a computer. Wireless is provided by the XBee module seen above and a gutted Wii remote accelerometer is in there for motion sensing. Check out the artfully blurry demonstration of the motion effects after the break.

While he added some potentiometer-based controls there is also an automatic power-down feature. [JP] replaced the mono pickup with a stereo one and used the extra conductor as a switch to activate the additional electronics. We wonder if he also winds his own pickups or builds his own effects pedals.

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