not a musician, and kind of a specific question. i have a nice acoustic guitar with a decent stock piezo pickup, but i want to install a single coil IN ADDITION to the current one, and change the output to be TRS, rather than standard TS jack. and i’d like to do that without making any more holes in the body, and no extra wires around the guitar. i already have a trs splitter on the outside, and another on/off switch for piezo/battery.
i basically got it working by doing some direct soldering and connecting them all inside the body. but, it’s flimsy, and i couldn’t get the end jack to tighten nicely, and i decided to do it over.
so, the question is: what is the right way of attaching this all? i am thinking of taking an electronics prototyping board, and soldering everything directly to it, so it’s not banging around in the body.
pics:
here’s the singlecoil i’m trying to add.
here’s my hack proof of concept. jacks are trs, but wired like ts. it all fit inside the body, and i just connected previous pickup and new pickup to the jacks.
If you look at the DiMarzio Black Angel products, it seems like the piezo is hard-wired the tip of a TRS endpin jack out with the mini-plug soldered to the ring that you can plug into the mag. That would eliminate one plug from your PoC there and be a little less clunky I guess but not sure if that’s possible here.
I dunno about the wiring implications of that. Was just thinking about the mounting implications really. I’d be hesitant to put any of this stuff inside my Lowden. Like where does the mag plug go when you remove the pickup? It just flops around?
my hope is that it will make pickups easily added/removable, so i’d rather go with plugs. but you are right, fewer thing banging in there would be great.
i already had some velcro loops installed inside, so i just tie to the side.
check it out, prototype v2. installed it with a bit of trouble, and still a bit flimsy for my liking, but way more comfortable playing already. only tested passive pickup so far, but it sounded great. knock on wood, soldering might hold up.
FYI: KMI has released an new version of the QuNexus. It’s now in a red ABS case but with updated firmware. It has a few new features, but most importantly they fixed whatever problem the originals had with the pads not having consistent velocity and touch. Price down to $179. You need their $36 MIDI expander box to run DIN MIDI / CV.
I picked up the older, more basic version of the above on the cheap. It’s really nice for being a tiny controller you could literally take anywhere. The biggest benefit for me is being able to plug straight in and sketch out an idea quickly. So far, I think its biggest weakness is velocity sensing–I just can’t seem to set it to where I can get a good range of velos without banging on it. The tilt and pressure seem to work pretty well though. With the tilt on, you can do vibrato on the pads and stuff. Note triggering can be a little wonky and requires good technique to avoid double hits, but I think I’m getting the feel for it after a few hours with it.
Also, this workstation I bought is making a big difference. On the older laptop, a setup with Surge running would idle at 25% CPU and could hit 50% CPU playing 4-note chords. On this machine, it idles at 1% to 2% and maybe hits 5% if I throw some big polyphony at it. I went with a different Linux distro and am using mostly different tools including Reaper as the DAW. Everything seems to be working pretty well with just a few GUI clicks to set it: no insane order of operations of connecting it required to make it work anymore.
If you all haven’t tried the free synthesizer Surge, I highly recommend it.
Imo these are pretty incredible free instruments that cover a ton of ground. I probably wouldn’t need much outside of these other than drums and samples. I’ll try to throw a few examples together and post them.
Should have mentioned this one too. It’s an Oberheim OB-X clone that’s completely free for non-commercial use and runs on Mac / Windows / Linux. Extremely straightforward software synthesizer that you can get running in seconds. It works as both a standalone app or a plug-in. Probably one of the best “get your feet wet” softsynths for someone trying to learn subtractive synthesis.
<3 Dumble clones and wish I had a place to run amps wide open. I recently regained the Steinberger itch, but the prices are crazy now so I settled for one of the vintage licensed copies. Trying to figure out a set of replacement pickups before it arrives but ffs there are so many options these days.
My first , and likely only, Dumble clone.
Supposed to have an amazing master volume, altho this is the first amp i have purchased without playing it first. (damn) But this thing SINGS , and Lou has been building amps for 40yrs.
+1 on needing a place to let it go.
The last two amps I bought (and sold) were JTM45 circuits. One an actual Marshall JTM45 reissue and the other a Mojave Plexi 45. They sounded incredible cranked, but then I moved into a condo and sold both. That must have been 15 years ago, and I’ve been making due with super low wattage stuff into isolation cabs or line level since then. At this point, for what I do, I’m not sure there’s a better solution than the modeling software. Isolation cab setups are cumbersome and expensive and ultimately still monitored through headphones instead of an “in the room” sound and feel. And there’s no way I can tell a difference between a good modeling setup and a recorded amp.
