Hi
This post has absolutely nothing to do with tone. May have nothing to do with impedance - although you real engineers out there might have to explain to me that it does.
All I need to know is what is the average ballpark output, in millivolts, of a Hot Rails pickup when you pluck a string. You can pick whatever string you want - fatty or skinny. I've always thought it would be about the same as a microphone, and I thought that to be 10 mV or less. But I read a post elsewhere in this forum that indicated that the initial primary attack could be as high as ONE VOLT, quickly dropping to 350 mV and decaying from there.
That's a big difference from my guestimate of 10 mV, LOL.
So, which would be closest - me or this other guy? Remember - I'm only interested in ballpark averages, so an answer like "Yeah, you're probably closer to 400 mV than 10 mV for the initial attack for a HotRails output" would be just fine. All I need the info for is to buy a meter for a steampunk cigar box guitar I'm building. Clearly a meter with a scale of 1-10 mV would be useless if the initial attack turns out to be more like 700 mV. It doesn't even need to be accurate - all I want is the effect of a needle flicking up and down when I pluck a string. It's purely for visuals.
Actually, if it can be done, I would rather do it with a VU meter than a mV meter as the one I'm looking at has a very cool steampunk vibe. But a VU meter seems to need a driver board requiring 12 volts plus and obviously I don't want to be messing around with power supplies. I suppose if I could find a driver needing only 9 volts I could run it off a battery that is turned on when the plug is inserted like my active bass. But it's for my kid and he would just leave it plugged in all the time.
Maybe there is an input resistor or something similar built into the VU meter that I could change to get it to flicker? Remember - it doesn't have to be accurate; I'm just after the visual effect.
If you have a better idea for using a VU meter passively, I'm up for whatever you've got in your bag.
Thanks for your time.
Phil
This post has absolutely nothing to do with tone. May have nothing to do with impedance - although you real engineers out there might have to explain to me that it does.
All I need to know is what is the average ballpark output, in millivolts, of a Hot Rails pickup when you pluck a string. You can pick whatever string you want - fatty or skinny. I've always thought it would be about the same as a microphone, and I thought that to be 10 mV or less. But I read a post elsewhere in this forum that indicated that the initial primary attack could be as high as ONE VOLT, quickly dropping to 350 mV and decaying from there.
That's a big difference from my guestimate of 10 mV, LOL.
So, which would be closest - me or this other guy? Remember - I'm only interested in ballpark averages, so an answer like "Yeah, you're probably closer to 400 mV than 10 mV for the initial attack for a HotRails output" would be just fine. All I need the info for is to buy a meter for a steampunk cigar box guitar I'm building. Clearly a meter with a scale of 1-10 mV would be useless if the initial attack turns out to be more like 700 mV. It doesn't even need to be accurate - all I want is the effect of a needle flicking up and down when I pluck a string. It's purely for visuals.
Actually, if it can be done, I would rather do it with a VU meter than a mV meter as the one I'm looking at has a very cool steampunk vibe. But a VU meter seems to need a driver board requiring 12 volts plus and obviously I don't want to be messing around with power supplies. I suppose if I could find a driver needing only 9 volts I could run it off a battery that is turned on when the plug is inserted like my active bass. But it's for my kid and he would just leave it plugged in all the time.
Maybe there is an input resistor or something similar built into the VU meter that I could change to get it to flicker? Remember - it doesn't have to be accurate; I'm just after the visual effect.
If you have a better idea for using a VU meter passively, I'm up for whatever you've got in your bag.
Thanks for your time.
Phil
