Feasible/Practical or Not?

E

ericmeyer4

New member
As with every new guitar project comes a flood of ideas, some good, some bad.

I need some input on what ideas are actually worth while and what would be easier to do another way.

For example:

I was going back and forth between putting in the SD tone circuits in the bass I am working on or just leaving a simple passive volume and tone knob. Then I thought about doing both and worked out a circuit, but after some thinking I decided to go with the tone circuits because having both would be a waste of money and time trying to get it to work and in the end I probably wouldn't use both.

Here are the ideas I am playing with...

1st idea: DC power jack for a 9v adapter.

Because the SD tone circuits are active electronics they require a battery. Well I don't want my battery to die on me or spend money to keep batteries in my guitar as I often forget to unplug it so I thought about adding a DC power jack for a 9v adapter. This will also allow me to power more stuff for a longer amount of time than a single battery would allow.

2nd idea: Battery kill switch

I started thinking about the circuit and it takes a stereo jack to turn the power on and off. Well I thought about replacing the stereo jack with a mono one and adding an on/off switch to turn the power on and off to the active electronics. This would also mean that I shouldn't have to have a plug in the normal guitar jack and I could just plug into the XLR jack and the electronics will still have power to work (see D.I. below).

3rd idea: LED

Add a LED light so I know when the electronics are on and off

4th idea: Internal D.I.

I thought about adding an internal D.I. so I can minimize the signal path and plug straight into the board. Basically it would be similar to having the SD bass D.I. build right into the guitar.


So what is easily feasible, practical, and does anyone have some suggestion on how to get it all to work?

Thanks,
Eric
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

When it comes to practicality there is only one thing you need to know:

If you have to ask,




NOPE!

On feasibility, all those sound like they require a lot of space, if you have it, they all sound like cool ideas to me.

I don't like the DC jack on the guitar, but i like the killswitch on the battery and the LED
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

ImmortalSix said:
On feasibility, all those sound like they require a lot of space, if you have it, they all sound like cool ideas to me.

I don't like the DC jack on the guitar, but i like the killswitch on the battery and the LED
Click to expand...

I should have enough space as I am building most everything myself.

I should have enough room for the pots, battery kill switch, led, and a ground lift switch for the DI on the control plate I am making.

The DC jack, outjack, and XLR jack will be on another seperate control plate.

The battery will be under a 3rd compartment on the back of the guitar.

Why wouldn't you put a DC jack on a guitar? Being tied down to a chord? Shock hazzard? Noise?
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

I like the idea of XLR. How about working it so that the Internal DI and the electronics run on Phantom power?
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

ericmeyer4 said:
Why wouldn't you put a DC jack on a guitar? Being tied down to a chord? Shock hazzard? Noise?
Click to expand...

Well, number one is not the plug / jack itself, but rather being dependent on wall power.

Number two is fastening a center-pin power connector in a way that will prevent it from being yanked, and also prevent damage to both the the male and female portions of the connection, not to mention the stiff and small diameter conductor in the cord. It just doesn't seem like a long-term solution to me.
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

ImmortalSix said:
Well, number one is not the plug / jack itself, but rather being dependent on wall power.

Number two is fastening a center-pin power connector in a way that will prevent it from being yanked, and also prevent damage to both the the male and female portions of the connection, not to mention the stiff and small diameter conductor in the cord. It just doesn't seem like a long-term solution to me.
Click to expand...

That is something I didn't think about... hmmmm

ImmortalSix said:
Yeah definitely. You would want it to be able to operate without phantom power, because there will inevitably be a time and place where you want to operate without +48V
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to do away with batteries all together, just to give myself more options.

I figure if I was sitting at my desk and I was recording use the 9v connection. If I happened to be moving around use the battery.
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

theres a little box that you can attach to your strap that does away with the need for batteries. ill try to find it later, cant think of the name or how it works at the moment
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

bingo! thanks, saved me sorting through a pile of old guitar worlds


i guess you still need a battery in the thing itself...oh well.
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

I posted a schematic for a phantom power box I made a couple of months ago. You plug a stereo cable in one end and a mono cable in the other. That way you can provide power to active electronics if you don't have the space. You can build one for $15.
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

That's an awful lot of trouble to go to for a very non-existent problem. I don't know about the Duncan circuits, but a single 9v will power an EMG 81 for like 3000 hours.

It would be a whole lot easier, and make a lot more sense to just remember to unplug the cable. Again, I don't know how efficient the Duncan circuit is, but you'd have to leave a guitar with an EMG pickup plugged in for a little over four months straight to drain it.
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

JB_From_Hell said:
That's an awful lot of trouble to go to for a very non-existent problem. I don't know about the Duncan circuits, but a single 9v will power an EMG 81 for like 3000 hours.

It would be a whole lot easier, and make a lot more sense to just remember to unplug the cable. Again, I don't know how efficient the Duncan circuit is, but you'd have to leave a guitar with an EMG pickup plugged in for a little over four months straight to drain it.
Click to expand...

Thank you for that. It is nice to see something from a new angle before I make a decision.
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

JB_From_Hell said:
Again, I don't know how efficient the Duncan circuit is, but you'd have to leave a guitar with an EMG pickup plugged in for a little over four months straight to drain it.
Click to expand...


im pretty sure its roughly the same





i'd like to see some kinda thing like the strap-mounted battery box for using 18v. i had a ***** of a time fitting the extra battery
 
Re: Feasible/Practical or Not?

ericmeyer4 said:
Thank you for that. It is nice to see something from a new angle before I make a decision.
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing when I first got EMG pickups. The other cool thing is that they will not work then just die. The tone will degrade, and you'll notice it sounding distorted and just "dirty". They won't just die in the middle of a song.

Part of the paranoia about batteries comes from guys like Chad Kroeger and Zakk Wylde. I've heard both of their guitar techs say that they change the batteries like once a week or something stupid like that "to keep the pickups nice and hot". Both of those guys change guitars constantly all night. Even if they played 7 gigs a week, and used the same guitar for all of them, and played a 3 hour show every night, that's only 21 hours, less than 1% of the battery life. Furthermore, the "nice and hot" comment is really dumb, because for probably 2999 of those hours, you won't hear any difference.
 
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