Questions about building guitar...

  • Thread starter Thread starter elenore19
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elenore19

elenore19

Slowing becoming un-noob.
Me and my friend are thinking about building a guitar someday just for the hell of it. Yeah, I know there's A LOT you have to do, but I just have one question for now.

Would it be possible to build the guitar with a built in pedal? like...put it in to the right of the bridge and somehow install it so that just the knobs are sticking out of the guitar..

I've just been thinking about how nice it would be to have the pedal at your fingertips, leterally, especially one I'm also tweaking and such.

Thanks for the help!
 
This is perfectly viable, in fact, back in the early 70s there were quite a few Les Paul copies that had this feature, most under the Univox name. Best place to put the circuit board is in the routing for the pots, if you have room. This allows you to put your controls right next to the volume and tone knobs, and use a mini switch to turn the effect on and off.
Now the question this begs is, is this a good idea? Well, yes and no. If you are putting a circuit in that needs a power supply, you wind up taking off the cover on the back so many times that you strip the screws out. If you put a seperate battery holder in place, you wind up doing a bit of routing, which may be difficult and/or unsightly. On the other hand, this is a great way to set up a transformer so that you can use XLR cables instead of 1/4". Les Paul did this, and he knew what he was doing.
Good luck on your project, and I hope this is helpful to you.
 
Vox used to build effects into their guitars in the 60's......I had a Vox hollowbody with a wah wha built in, along with other effects, plus an E tuner.....there is an arm behind the bridge that the heel of your hand rests on to make it work........very far ahead for the time.......
 
It is entirely possible to build effects in to a guitar body. The question I always ask when someone asks for something like that is what are your specific reasons for doing it and what do you gain by doing so? It does offer some potential for processing the signal independent of any vol/tone although I'm still not sure why this could be a good idea.

My advice to you would be concentrate on building a decent guitar and all that that entails before breaking to far from established path. Building your own axe is fun and rewarding but it does require a good deal of patience and accurate work. Concentrate on the design of your proposed guitar and focus on keeping things as simple as possible for your first build.

You can always try fitting a unit in an old junker to see if it works as you want. That way you won't waste a lot of time, effort and good wood on something that you don't really need or like.

If you really must build in an effects board of some sort research the layout and size of the pcb you intend using. Think carefully about where you are going to house it and also how you intend to wire it up. Keep asking yourself why, as your planned guitar evolves on paper before you start making sawdust.

Good luck
 
Sure, it's just like having active electronics on a guitar. You will need to design or select a circuit, and make a PCB. I would use PCB mount pots and integrate the volume and tone controls into the circuit. You have a lot more control options available within the active circuit, rather than having passive controls in front of the pedal circuitry. That will also maximize use of space inside the control cavity.

You also could do XLR or 1/4 outputs, or both. You don't need a transformer to drive a balanced XLR out; there are other methods of driving a balanced line; since you already have an active circuit onboard, an active balanced or impedance balanced circuit would be trivial to implement, and it would cost a lot less than a transfomer. But transformers have their advantages too.

As for the battery, there are 9V battery holders that allow access without removing screws. You would probably need a separate rout for that, but if you are building an entire guitar, that is a minor task.
 
Norman Greenbaum used a built in fuzz circuit in his Tele for "Spirit In The Sky".
 
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