Tantalising photo, no?
This was an idea which I started with my good friend Jowie.
Unfortunately most of the photos of its development were lost with my phone when I went crowd surfing to Motley Crue, so we will be lacking a few bits.
Essentially, we took a second hand Chinese Telecaster clone, hollowed it out and stuck on a new side made with some wood we found in New Cross. This was fixed with dowels to make sure it was sturdy. The original right hand side is fixed on the edge to give it a sexy shape. We then designed and gutted the guitar to fit in the electronics. The tone/vol/pickup selector had to be moved to fit in the keyboard and we chose to run the cable from the voice selector under the scratchplate.
It was then painted silver.
The electronics are from a Yahama ps-11 and there was a lot of unnecessary crap to cut out, external plugs and power sockets etc. The keys are powered by 1 nine volt PSS battery rather than 4 AAs (rechargeable you guys, think of the planet)
It plays very well. The keys are a little quiet compared to the guitar, so I used Nic Collins' transformer trick (i.e. running the signal backwards through an output transformer to give it a boost) and that makes them about even.
If you have any questions ~ I'm happy to answer them...
Here's some more pics and vids for now. They are very stylish and artistic *thanks L
Pics:
Vids:
These videos were SO hard to edit.
This was better to edit ~ tougher to upload though.
Edit:
New VideoThis was better to edit ~ tougher to upload though.
The idea shows promise- but you better shield that guitar. The hum is horrible.
ReplyDeleteawesome very ergonomically functional! such a freeking great and usefull idea.
ReplyDeleteShe's a model and she's looking good!
ReplyDeleteNow all you have to do is learn to play both instruments and get somebody to fix it for you so that it 1. is tuned 2. works properly 3. looks better.
ReplyDeleteJust commission a new one. Or even better.. don't.
hey kleinebre (or anyone)- any ideas about reducing that hum? I wired the guitar back up with the sheilding in the same place, but when I turn the tone up or put it through a distortion pedal... well, you can hear... Any suggestions?
ReplyDeleteTurn the volume on the distortion pedal perhaps? Just start with all the settings on it low and move up to see where the threshold without feedback is. As far as reducing the overall feedback from the instrument, check all of your wiring to make sure you don't have any loops in grounding wires and make sure all the ground wires go to a master ground. I'm sure there are instructions somewhere on the internet for this. Also, don't mix the keyboards signals with the guitar and have separate outputs for them, and that should definitely help if you haven't done that already. Cool concept, maybe I'll try this with one of the failed guitar bodies I made since I would have no other use for it and experimental instruments are just awesome. Keep learning on those, it could yield some great sounds!
ReplyDelete