DIY stringed instruments

[telstarmagikistferrari]

My girlfriend graduated from art school with a degree in furniture making, so she has some hand tools and stuff we've been employing to make a couple cigar box electric guitars. I will post pics of ours if there's any interest, but we got the idea from this page:

http://cigarboxguitars.com/resources/how-to-build-a-cigar-box-guitar

We're having a lot of fun making them. I got my notches in the box cut, the sections cut out of the neck-board for the head and cigar box lid; I got the neck shaped and stained it a nice 'walnut' brown. I painted some guitar-style dots along the neck and carved in some fret lines in a pretty much random fashion, in sort of a humorous nod to it being a guitar. It looks pretty slick though. I picked an unusual box for mine, which is about twice as long as it is wide, and pretty deep for a cigar box. For the pickup I'm using a piezo transducer. The ones I got at radio shack are in a plastic casing; I'm hoping that won't decrease their sensitivity.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else has made anything like this. There are lots of variations in the stringed-instrument category.. this is perhaps the most obvious project. Fun though. Thanks for reading,

Marck F.

[adambee7]

COOL

MIDI IT

[droffset]

Ooh, I've been wanting to build one of those.

There's a DIY standup Bass tutorial on the web too that is tempting to try.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/09/diy_cardboard_box_upright.html

Pics! Sound!

[sduck]

I built a really nice strat replica with parts from warmoth for the body and neck, and pieced together the rest from what I liked. It's a fantastic guitar, but I don't think this is the kind of thing you're talking about.



One day I'd like to build an electric guitar from scratch, relatively speaking - carving the neck, shaping the body, etc.

[diablojoy]

these probably aren't what they mean either, but these are from scratch
i don't build many or very often and i doubt if i could ever part with any
of them, still i plan to do a few more one day.

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[slacker]

Check out the Wok guitar here

http://artyone.blogtown.co.nz/

[wmonk]

Built a few guitars now. First one from a kit, then more and more parts diy from scratch (2nd guitar body, 3rd guitar body and neck). Now working on a P-Bass clone, with diy pickups.
Other things with strings : a hommel, dutch string instrument similar to a norwegian langeleik, german scheltholz and looks a bit like an appalachian dulcimer.

Anyway, that diy upright bass is awesome

[telstarmagikistferrari]

Nevermind what I 'meant!' These are all awesome..

I think making your own instruments, whether it's DIY synth stuff, circuit bending, guitar-building, whatever is awesome. Good posts, thanks.

[fluxmonkey]

8' steel florescent light fixture with 12 strings radiating from the center. the flex of the steel make the thing into one giant whammy bar

b

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[telstarmagikistferrari]

awesome.. got any recordings of that beast?

[Top Top]

I built this electric zither type thing:



It was my first try at cutting anything with a jigsaw. The darker blue thing is a "chord wand" that lets you play any major or minor chord in a key when you have it tuned to a key.

The white things are exciters (transducers). There is an amplifier built in that you can feed audio into and the strings vibrate sympathetically - sort of like a tuned reverb or some indian musical instruments.

[D.Miñoza]

bbob - the "longStingedThing" is very interesting! do you have any recordings of it?

[telstarmagikistferrari]

Two Top:

that thing kicks ridiculous ass.. awesome. you're giving me ideas.

[Top Top]

Thanks.

Also, I was just reading over your initial post again, if you are using the radio shack piezos, you can just break them out of their plastic casing.

The other thing you can do is just break a hole in the back of the casing, and then solder a thin piece of metal to the back of the piezo (the side that is just solid metal). Then attach that piece of metal to the surface you want to mic up.

Here is a pic of a spring reverb I made using this method - the piezo elements are attached to the spring via a cotter pin that has been bent out, cut short, and then soldered both to the back of the piezo and the spring itself. The sound travels through the piece of metal to the piezo.



This is useful where it is hard to tape down the piezo to the surface. I find that the wires fall off of piezo elements too easily, so anything that helps me avoid touching the piezo itself, or avoids taking it out of its casing, is welcome in my opinion. You could try the same thing, but run the piece of metal to a small hole drilled in the bridge for it to fit into, or the to the surface of the box.

[telstarmagikistferrari]

thanks for the tip(s).. these are handy things to know about.

[fluxmonkey]

here's another one from a show last night. i dont document my stuff very well, so these are other folks pics... not much recorded right now...

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[numbernone]

bbob is an action man! too much recording and documenting would slow him down

[telstarmagikistferrari]

no doubt

[j.dilisio]

You should check out Neil Feather's inventions,..
http://www.neilfeather.org/
I've had the opportunity to see him play a few times around
Baltimore and I'm consistently blown away by both the quality
of his instruments and the unique sounds they're capable of.

[synchroton]

I got a chance to play with one of the prototypes of the milwaukee servoelectric guitar, and it's fantastic!

http://servoelectricguitar.com/

[adambee7]

This is pretty awesome.

http://vimeo.com/12658207

[telstarmagikistferrari]

adambee.. that is awesome.

not only is the instrument very cool, but he rocks the shit out of it! I love the song!

[fluxmonkey]

oops... posted this to the wrong thread: