So i posted my old tele i had modded and some other ideas for removing more chaff so, you could look cooler. My tele had blank control plate (pup hardwired out), one big single on the neck. Silver coins, magnets, tons of copper wrapping. I actually routed a hole from the bridge so i could dump loose screws and metal scrap down to the pickup. Eventually bore a 4 finger grip because tone.
Anyways. What about a mercury switch in the headstock instead of a trem or whammy bar? Rockstar guitar moves replace divebombs, and shoegazing or, springs instead of wires, (probably cooler in an acoustic with a pezio). It has been on my mind cuz i want to build the john stupid of guitars. Any ideas? Thanks for reading my post.
-vasily
Welcome!
Mercury tilts are binary (on or off) but a steel ball in a tube lined with resistance wire would allow playable sweeps when run along the neck.
I’ve been making odd guitar mods for years; internal liquid distortion and noise, sympathetic drones and wooden bass strings (xylotone!). I have never understood the purists, the tone fabelists and those who relic who forget that if it wasn’t for experimenters like us the modern guitar wouldn’t exist.
Here you’ll find a wealth of ideas and zero judgement. There are many here creating the weird and wonderful. Do share some photos when you can.
I have had a modular, patch cable controlled pickup array design in my to-do pile for years now so it’s great to hear about your work. Keep going.
Kicked out of the group or something. Mustve been a mod, said something about younger generations not knowing and ruining music or something.
Im gonna have to google some mods you mentioned but, i like the flat, empty look of just a wilkinson double saddle with an out jack. I got back into sound and electronics not too long ago but, have been doing mostly synth, bent things, modular (surprise), tape/floppy/cards. I just want a 50 dollar guitar to make priceless.
Ever thought about dredging magnets for speakers? jumper cables welded to the cone for leads. You can get ones with a 4500lb pull
Not for speakers but i have used large magnets to make big pickups that allowed me and some pals to play long stretches of a wire fence like a massive diddly-bo.
Most of my mods have odd made up names i’ve never published (Xylotone was one example) but;
The liquid distortion/noise - it was like a spring reverb but a small water tank (not a spring) with bits floating on top and a noise source as an additional driver i used piezo pickups plus electret mics and an old 5 way selector allowed for a choice of arrangement.
The Sympathetic drones - extra strings on the body of the guitar like a sitar and a driver (like a sustainer) pickup arrangement to make them hum.
A few years ago i made a low frequency sub-oscillator for a saxophone player to use live. It ended up known as The-G or Gspot-G as certain notes made the floors hum.
In the fifties, the same kind of people would probably have met Les Paul’s innovations with horror. As for Leo Fender’s idea of a solid body electrified double bass, I suspect smelling salts and fainting couches might have featured in the response.