Cheap hardware additions that helped your work.

  On 8/13/2015 at 11:10 PM, modey said:

That looks lovely RSP! I've thought about getting into making stringed instruments, but considering I have 10 guitars already, it probably wouldn't be a good idea..

That just means you have to invent your own stringed instruments, that way it won't be redundant.

Ha, true. I have always wanted to make a kind of resonant stringed instrument that has a bunch of tuned strings in front of a speaker, with the speaker playing whatever audio you like, with electric guitar pickup(s), so it just picks up the strings resonating.. for nice ambient shimmery stuff.

  On 8/14/2015 at 6:10 AM, modey said:

Ha, true. I have always wanted to make a kind of resonant stringed instrument that has a bunch of tuned strings in front of a speaker, with the speaker playing whatever audio you like, with electric guitar pickup(s), so it just picks up the strings resonating.. for nice ambient shimmery stuff.

I've been working on more or less literally that, actually, but I'm playing with surface drivers/bone-conductive transducers instead of a speaker. Got sidetracked from it finishing that guitar up but I I've got the parts together for a second prototype.

Wow nice! Be sure to post video/audio when you make something!

nice.

I have planned to build a stringed instrument for years. made detailed plans and everything, well, sort of.

It's basically a manual tempo acoustic string sequencer.

I'm wondering if maybe we need a new "homemade instruments" type thread.

Modey, for the kind of thing you're talking about I've had the most luck with one of these transducers to excite the strings mechanically (I scraped off the little rubber pad and superglued it straight to the wood near one end of the strings, the opposite end from the pickup.

If you can find one of these (I swapped an Alesis HR16 for one a few years ago) it's basically the same thing; it's designed for feeding back a guitar's output into the neck but you can use it to feed pretty much any sound into anything you can clamp it on, and sometimes it sounds great.

Chesney, that sounds like a really cool project, I hope you make it!

My pride and joy:

http://imgur.com/a/1iAwJ

I know this isn't a homemade instruments thread, but was cheap (came out to about $130 for the parts) and it's definitely added to my work. You can get some pretty fun sounds out of this thing.

That is hilarious. Absolutely love the art on the interface like that.

Top shelf knob choice.

That is honestly the best design on a hardware device I have ever seen. Great work.