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Comment count is 37
SteamPoweredKleenex - 2015-03-15

So you've made a low-rent version of the musical instrument room from the House on the Rock, yet even less of it works?


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

I had to google that but nope. Except for the not working well part, the major design considerations here were finishing it in one afternoon without having to buy anything so I could test the bone driver before I start getting materials to build the actual instrument.


Binro the Heretic - 2015-03-15

I would definitely dig hearing this in the background when I read or play video games.


Bort - 2015-03-15

NOT COOL DUDE. If you're going to play the Brown Note, you really ought to warn people.

Anyone else shit themselves uncontrollably listening to this? No judgment.


kingarthur - 2015-03-15

Five for Bort.


That said, it's got a nice tone to it, even with the hum.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

Final one will span maybe three octaves (this one is just roots and 5ths because I only had a few strings I could sacrifice, lots of other stuff that needs them).

Also it's ultimately going to be blended in with the signal that's driving it in normal use, not on its own this way. ore like sympathetic strings on an Indian instrument, or a weird pitched reverb.


Rosebeekee - 2015-03-15

The next thing you make should be this thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toXNVbvFXyk


Chancho - 2015-03-15

Try properly grounding your circuits. zzzzzzzzzxxxxxxxzxxxZZZZZXxxxzzz


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

It's properly grounded, there's just no EMF shielding. I was testing a driver to see if it was powerful enough for the next build, hum wasn't a concern. This thing's getting dismantled tomorrow.

You should have heard it before I notched out the first 15 or so odd harmonics above 60hz.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

There are some details about it in the description.


Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2015-03-15

Nice! What do you work at Zircon? are u a sound engineer?


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

Nope, although I've done post work and editing freelance from time to time. Right now I'm a librarian and spend most of my spare time recording and more recently building guitars.

The final project that this s a first step toward is going to basically be a stereo spring reverb except with 12 tuned strings per channel instead of springs, mounted on a single resonant structure so that the two channels interact mechanically. This proves that a 10 watt driver is powerful enough, and that I should be able to cover pretty much all of the range I need with about a 25" scale length and individually movable bridges for each string (like a koto).

I've got an instrumental duo getting going right now, so in the short run we're both going to be playing through it and I'll refine the design based on our experience until it's at the point where I can offer them to other people.


Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2015-03-15

Cool! I wont pretend to understand all of that but I applaud it nonetheless, bravo!


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

Just think of it as a guitar being used as a speaker for another guitar to play through and you've got the basic idea.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

Or whatever. You could play your stereo through it if you wanted to make it sound ridiculous.


Oscar Wildcat - 2015-03-15

I guess the best piece of advice I could offer is to replace the speaker in your amp with an iron core and coil of equivalent resistance/inductance. Then put the core close to the strings at various points away from the pickups. That'll improve things markedly.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

There are no speakers being used at all here, the speaker in that Pignose is disconnected, I'm using it because it was the only amp I had handy that was about the right wattage, safe to run with a 4 ohm load, and would take a guitar signal without messing with external preamps. The recorded sound is straight into a mic pre on my interface, with a 50s mic transformer wired in reverse for impedance matching.

The hum is because the lead on that junk drawer pickup isn't shielded and it isn't worth wasting the copper tape on something I was only going to use once.


Oscar Wildcat - 2015-03-15

Right, so what is the amplifier driving then? Is it that grey cylinder taped to the closest end of the machine in the preload? What is that thing.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

Yeah, it's a 10 watt bone conduction transducer.

http://tinyurl.com/kuymztu

I peeled the rubber pad off and glued it to the wood to get better acoustic coupling and it works well, but for the final project I'll be using two of these:

http://tinyurl.com/mv2fpg7

I've got the whole design pretty well worked out, this was just a quick test to make sure it responded the way I wanted to when I played a guitar into it and it does, it swells really naturally, very similar feel to actual acoustic drone strings, so I'm good to go.


Oscar Wildcat - 2015-03-15

I see now. Those things are basically speakers without the cone. That's a pretty wacky way to get the strings humming, by beating on the neck like that. I still suggest you try driving the strings directly with a coil but you should go as the spirit moves you. Update us with the next build.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

Driving them directly was my original plan a long time ago but since then I discovered mechanical feedback devices and fell in love with the way they respond. They've been around forever, but it's usually used to feed an instrument's signal back into itself to create sustain or simulate acoustic feedback. If I remember right, an electromechanical sustainer for lap steel was patented in the 20s or early 30s, before the first electric guitar had been built, but the most recent one I know of isn't around anymore:

http://www.sustainiac.com/model-c.htm

I was able to trade for one of those a few years ago and experimented quite a bit with using it to drive different objects with different sorts of sounds and definitely prefer it.

Directly driving the strings like you're describing is how most modern sustainers work, and for what I'm doing the way they respond is too uniform, they swell in too quickly, they're to evenly balanced. The sound I'm going for really requires mechanical action to be involved.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

Down the road I'm going to build one that's fully acoustic, too. Feeding an acoustic guitar back into itself with a transducer sounds incredible, but feeling other signals through an acoustic guitar isn't too great because of the way the guitar resonates, it's got a really unpleasant midrange bump. I have a feeling that it wouldn't be too tough to make something with a flatter, wider response if you designed it from the ground up, though, especially since good freeware for calculating box resonances is so readily available.


Oscar Wildcat - 2015-03-15

Sounds like you've found a good replacement for the sustainiac.

I get why the acoustic guitar is better for this. If you're going to build a guitar, consider that your acoustic coupling is through a big quarter wave resonant thing ( the neck, clamped solidly at the base to your work bench ). Whereas the string itself resonates in the half wave mode. It makes me wonder if the coupling between the two modes isn't parametric.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-16

I've built a few guitars at this point. The project this is for isn't really very similar to the Sustainiac except insofar as they both drive the strings with a similar mechanism.

So, are you a mechanical engineer?


yogarfield - 2015-03-15

You have a lot of cool stuff, can I come over?


fluffy - 2015-03-15

Reminds me of Alvin Lucier's "Music On A Long Thing Wire."


fluffy - 2015-03-15

long THIN wire


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

8================================D


Robin Kestrel - 2015-03-15

You had me at "bone conduction transducer".


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-15

8================================D


RedRust - 2015-03-15

That's cool. Must sound mesmerizing in real life...


SolRo - 2015-03-15

How much meth did this take?


duck&cover - 2015-03-15

Method to his madness.


ashtar. - 2015-03-15

Five for the inside of your house looking exactly like I imagined the inside of your house would look.


Hooker - 2015-03-15

I'm not equipped to appreciate this.


chumbucket - 2015-03-16

When you manage to get it to go to eleven, we'll talk.


Old_Zircon - 2015-03-16

Give me a month.


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