It has been quite long since I first considered building my own guitar. It has also been long since I first wanted to get into woodworking/sculpting. I’ve finally taken it beyond the aspiration phase to actual execution. I will be documenting the process in a series of posts, of which this is the first.

I began this journey by reading a lot about guitar building online, browsing different forums and reading construction logs. I also spent much time looking through guitar-making related products in shops like StewMac, Luthiers Mercantile International, Warmoth etc.

The next step, that took about a year an a half, was deciding to go for it. I bought Melvyn Hiscock’s Make Your Own Electric Guitar, which I think is very well written. It is full of transcribed personal experience, that will save you time and errors, and guide you through the entire build.

Beginning to gather supplies, I started to design and choose what my guitar will be like. At first I considered making it an SG clone. I really like the SG and was avid about getting one after I first tried it. I then decided that given the effort put into building my own guitar, I’d rather try a more interesting custom design. And thus, the very fun part of sketching out guitars in pencil has began.

Eventually I came up with 3 designs that I liked enough to refine and illustrate:

and the chosen finalist:

I decided to go with Mahagony for both the neck and the body, Rosewood fretboard, Gibson scale length (not accurate in the sketches) and a two humbuckers setup.

My next decision was not use power tools, unless I will absolutely have to. The are few reasons for choosing so. First, I do not own a router, a sander or any other of the woodworking associated power tools, and I don’t know anyone who does and can lend me his. Second, I’m going to be building the guitar in a room in an apartment – meaning I have to go low on noise and mess. I hope that it will end up as a wise choice, and I don’t mind the extra time and effort that manual tools require.

Once I had everything at hand, things became more interesting. I started by cutting an angled headstock out of the neck blank using a Japanese Ryoba saw. I followed the method outlined in this tutorial.

I then planed both the cut part and the rest of the neck. When I saw the effect of the plane on the sawn wood, I finally realized what planing is all about. I glued up the parts and clamped everything overnight:

I made my first building mistake in the way I clamped the parts. Applying perpendicular pressure on an angle filled with glue caused the parts to slid and the result was not as I have first planned:

The result however, was far from bad. First, I had enough room for mistakes, as the neck still has to be narrowed down and shaped. Minor inaccuracies in this early stage can be easily handled. Moreover, the slipped parts have created just the correct width for the headstock, meaning I will have less work when shaping it.

That’s as far as I have gotten. Next, I’m going to make more planning and measurements in order to get the scale length right, and then I will be working on routing the truss rod route and cutting the rough shape of the body.

a tale about how I hacked a mint keyboard backlight when I was supposed to study.

My dad brought me the Microsoft/Razer Reclusa keyboard earlier today. I did not ask for it, but I did like the idea of upgrading my ~10 years old keyboard.

It turned out to be a nice keyboard. I wouldn’t say it’s really a “gamer” keyboard ( unlike the wolfclaw etc ), but it’s got a nice feel to it, and that’s what matters to me.

While trying it out, I found the backlight to be quite annoying in daylight, even a bit straining the eye. I quickly installed the keyboard’s software and looked around for a way to turn it off. Failing to find one, I googled around, and the results indicated that the backlight cannot be turned off.

The keyboard is brand new, so it was a bit hard for me to decide, but I knew what had to be done. I had to pry it open and install a backlight switch!

I later decided it would be much more elegant to hook a transistor to the Scroll Lock LED to do the switching, rather than having an external mechanical switch. I knew it was generally possibly, but was not sure about the wiring.

This review was very helpful when taking the keyboard apart. I found it after I had already unscrewed all the bottom screwes except the hidden one, so it had saved me from possibly breaking the bottom plate. It had also served in guiding me to the LEDs.

This page served as a guideline for creating the switch. At first I tried the second diagram, using an NPN transistor ( I never use a PNP before, even though I had a few ). I hooked the Base lead of the NPN transistor to the + end of the LED, and the Emitter and Collector as shown in the diagram. When I connected the keyboard, I immediatly realised that I did a mistake.

The LEDs in the keyboard ( and if I’m not mistaken, generally in electrical circuits ) are toggled by their ground pin, the +V is always positive. I then realised I had to use a PNP transistor as shown in the first switch diagram.

It is important to note that if you don’t push the transistor to its saturated state ( if I understand correctly ) , the output will be lower that it should. I skipped the extra resistor because I can barely solder and I was too lazy to calculate or measure ( lost my multimeter ) the required values. I really don’t care about how bright the backlight shines anyway…

My soldering skills are horrible, and most of the time I relied on sheer luck. Here are some action shots:

Now I can turn the backlight on and off whenever I want!

PLEASE NOTE that the information above can and will cause damage to you and your surrounding. you have a high chance of breaking your keyboard and/or PC, and setting your house on fire. I am not responsible if you’re stupid enough to try it with as little background knowledge as I have.

However, if you do make this mod to your keyboard, please let me know!

The next step is to create a Gmail notifier that will flash the keyboard whenever new mail arrives =)

Here’s my latest project, it’s less than 24 hours old =)

I’ve always wanted a looper effect, like the boss loopstation, mainly because the online demos were so neat. Being a bass player, I though it would help me practice with drum loops, but it’s just not worth the money unless you’re going to use it live. I ended up playing drum samples on my PC and playing along on the bass.

more (and video) after the break

About 2 weeks ago, a friend asked me about creating a digital recording circuit, for a project (which will be posted here when completed, going to stay a secret for now). Some online searching brought us to a keychain digital recorder product. After comparing some models, we found one that had 60 seconds of recording time, and we got 2 of it off ebay. I then came up with the idea to use this little recorder as a guitar looping effect, and wondered how it will handle it.

Yesterday, we met and started to disassemble and test this unit. We hooked it up to the Arduino, powered it from the 3.3V supply, and tested the “button press emulation”. We later went to a friend for a BBQ. When I came back home, I decided to continue experimentation. I had desoldered the microphone and speaker from the unit, and soldered some more hook-up wire. I had some problems with getting the circuit to function properly, I think I had a short circuit somewhere. I went to sleep without getting it to work.

This morning, I had a day off work, and decided to continue this little project. I soldered some more wire to replace problematic alligator clips positioning, and everything worked again. I connected my guitar to where the mic was, changed the Arduino code a little, and fired it up. You can see it in action on the following video:

And here’s the simple arduino code:

int recPin = 4;
int playPin = 2;
 
void setup()
{
    //prepare pins for output
    pinMode(recPin,OUTPUT);
    digitalWrite(recPin,HIGH);
    pinMode(playPin,OUTPUT);
    digitalWrite(playPin,HIGH);
}
 
void loop()
{
    //wait and then record a 5 second loop
    delay(5000);
    digitalWrite(recPin,LOW); //"hold down" rec button
    delay(5000);
    digitalWrite(recPin,HIGH); //release it
    delay(30); // to pass debouncing
    while(1) {
        digitalWrite(playPin,LOW);
        delay(30);
        digitalWrite(playPin,HIGH);
        delay(4970);
 
        digitalWrite(playPin,LOW); //emulate a second click, this will stop playing the sample, and will be ready to play
        //again in the next loop iteration
        delay(30);
        digitalWrite(playPin,HIGH);
        delay(30);
    }
}

When I continue working on it, I will need to build some sort of preamp for the output signal. I will also recreate the Arduino program on a PIC 12F675 (or whatever the model number is) of which I have quite a few. There’s also need for better timing, and a pushbutton to start/stop loop recording (and adjust the length of the loop accordingly).

I hope to get it to a usable state, and have some creative fun with it. Now it’s time to get back to my homework in algebraic structures.

I installed it in my Fender Highway-1 Jazz Bass, in place of the regular tone potentiometer, and wired the switch part of it to change between two different wiring modes for the pickups:

• Parallel – Which is the default on the Jazz Bass. In this mode each pickup gets a volume knob.
• Series -Connecting the pickups in series, so that they act as one. This delivers higher gain out of the pickups, and a punchier tone. When in series mode, you only get one volume knob that controls both pickups.

I used the following diagram that I had found online:

It took me about 45 minutes to assemble, because soldering was a bit tricky, and I forgot one connection after fastening all the screws back.

I have no proper way to record my bass on the computer, so no sound samples for now. All I can say is that I’m very pleased with this new sound of my bass.  I still have to try it on a serious amp to get a better idea of the new tone.

If you own a Jazz Bass, not afraid to void your warranty, and can solder (or get someone to solder it for you), I’d suggest you to try this mod.

A Tremolo is an effect unit that modulates the amplitude of the guitar signal, usually in a triangular waveform. This version uses a square waveform, for a more switching, chopping kind of effect. This kind of effect can be heard in the beginning of Plant Telex by Radiohead. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine uses this kind of effect too, he, however, uses a “kill switch” on his guitar, which he controls manually.

More after the break…

This is a very simple and low quality circuit, whose problems can be seen in the following video. I built it in about an hour, that’s how simple it is. It is based on a simple NAND oscillator from an LED Chaser circuit that I had built maybe a year ago. Here’s the circuit diagram(proudly drawn in GIMP):

Values that I had used in my circuit:

• Supply Voltage: 5VDC
• R1 – 1MOhm
• R2 – 10KOhm
• C1 – 47uF

The idea behind the circuit is quite simple. The NAND provides a square wave pulse (and there are better places where you can understand how it works, google “NAND oscillator”) that is then hooked up to the 4066 IC. The 4066 is contains 4 analog switches, where each switch is controlled by a single input pin – as seen in the following diagram:

The 4093 NAND IC contains 4 NAND gates, so I used a free one to invert the clock signal.

I used 2 of the 4066 switches. The first one, connects the input signal + and the output signal +, while the second one connects the output signal + and the ground. One switch is controlled by the output of the oscillator, and the other is controlled by the same output, but inverted. The result is that the output signal switches between the input signal, and no signal (ground connected to +).

This is rather primitive, but that’s the whole point behind this simple project !

Here’s a short video showing my prototype and live demo of the effect (grr, I forget my entire English vocabulary when I talk):

I will be glad to hear any ideas as to how to improve the circuit. My main goals are:

• Eliminate the POP noise
• Allow higher frequencies
• Add a 4017 counter with 8 switches(representing one bar) that will allow more complex chopping

I have loads of bipolar transistors, maybe I’ll try to use them instead of the 4066…

That’s it ! Please let me know if you build it yourself !

Two weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me for help. He wanted to create something that will allow him to control all sorts of effects in Fruity Loops, like many available midi controller products. He was, however, looking for the cheapest solution, and suggested using an old keyboard as a controller.

As I was toying with MIDI and my Arduino at the time, and started messing around in Fruity Loops, I was able to come up with a quick and easy solution. I used code from the s2midi application, that I had known from my Arduino prototyping and another Code Project example about keyboard hooks in C#.

After around 10 hours of development I came up with a small application that catches all keyboard input using hooks (and does not pass them to other applications, to prevent collision with existing hotkeys), and generates MIDI control commands. MIDI Yoke was used to bridge my application’s output and FL’s input.

The application works by “emulating” knobs, with assigned keys to increment, decrement, maximize or minimze their values. It is also possible to choose different step sizes for inc/dec. Currently the knobs are “hardcoded” as they are needed for my friend’s modified keyboard controller:

He connected the keyboard via USB, alongside a normal keyboard, and is going to use the two to control Fruity Loops in real-time.

Here’s a screenshot of my app:

Although it may be a bit funny to post about this application without releasing the code and executable, I’d rather not do it at the moment, as it requires a bit more work. I did not aim for high code quality anyway, as it is one of my first C# applications.

I think this will turn out to a simple program that one could use to control music software better than a mouse, but still no match for a true hardware MIDI controller (which is one of the projects in my TODO list )

On November the 22nd, I attended my first workshop. From the Facebook invitation:

This Thursday – Nov 22nd @ 20:00 we’ll be holding a GargeGeeks Heads workshop – hosting by our dear friend and great artist Piven Hanoch (http://www.pivenworld.com/pivenWorld.html).

We’ll be all creating head shots from electronic junk we’ll each bring from his/her own little electro-junk yard (or living room….)

Come and build faces that: Interact, Talk, Move, Light & Vibrate or just look cool

Please bring electro-junk & some basic tools

At first I hesitated about “wasting” my precious junk on a piece of art that probably would not make full use of the materials (an old printer, 3 broken cdroms, a cordless phone etc). I discovered, however, that workshops such as that one, are truly inspiring. Even though I didn’t get to build anything advanced in terms of electronics, I did build stuff. I was being more creative and productive than I ever am when working alone in my basement on various projects *cough* delayed drum machine *cough*.

Me and my two friends – Amihai Neiderman and Nur Nachman Eytan – grouped together and built “The German Mouse”. It was created from an old motherboard, a portable cd player, an actual computer mouse, a piece of salvaged circuit that spoke out something in German and some random bits.

And Here’s a video of our creation:

My lesson and message to fellow makers, tinkerers and others that are stuck on the “Design and Concept” phase – Get your tools and start to build stuff. Hands-on experience is super productive and inspirational !

Today is the birthday of a very good friend of mine ( we’ll call him Y ). He is celebrating together with 2 other friends (A and G) this evening. I’ve spent about 4 hours together with some buddies to try and find gifts, resulting in great presents found for the other 2 guys, but not for Y.

As I arrived back home, the idea just struck me. I decided to make a printed book version of a widely unpopular, fictional blog that he had written together with G. I will not link to the blog in order to keep their identity secret. (Identifying themselves with this blog will make them look quite mad, sick, twisted, and plain stupid).

I was very excited and highly motivated about this project. The time was 16:00. I set down to write a script in perl that will fetch me all the posts from the blog. Perl kept crashing for some reason, so I switched to python. The problem was that this blog (hosted on www.israblog.co.il) was nowhere near valid XHTML, and was lacking advanced RSS syndication (I later found out that there is an RSS feed, but only for the last posts). After 1.5 hours (17:30) I had a working script, using sgmlop – a library for python for SGML parsing (I’m still not sure what it means, but it worked). Only then did I realize, that there could be multiple pages per month. I gave up on trying to figure the number of pages and fetch the posts in each page, and I fell back to the simple method of Copy-Paste. In retrospect, the scripting time could have been used to finish it, If I had used the copy-paste method instead.

After some work (and with some help from a friend), I had all the posts in a Word document, in a chronological order, ready to be printed. Now I only had to figure out how to print it, so that the pages could be folded to form the booklets that form a binded book. As seen in the following illustration ( Notice that being an Hebrew speaker, I printed a right-to-left book, and so is the book in the diagram. For left-to-right, you’ll have to reverse the order ):

This is the base “structure” of our book. If you look at the point where the pages are attached to each other, in a hardcover book, you will notice the book is organized into several booklets that are binded together. I got a recommendation to have 5-6 pages (sheets of paper) from Here , but I ended up working with 7-pages booklets. Each sheet of paper is printed with 2 pages, on both sides, in landscape orientation.

In order to print those booklets ( the sample 2 sheets one in the diagram ) the pages have to be ordered as follows (again, for right-to-left books):

• first page – first side: A | H
• first page – second side: G | B
• second page – first side: C | F
• second page – second side: E | D

I knew most of the above at this point, but I had no idea about how I’m going to achieve this goal.

Then, a guy named Stephen, from Canada – who has been my team leader in two HL2 mod projects :Shock and Price of Peace – said ‘Hi’ on MSN. It turns out that he is some extreme Word guru, and that he had some free time (and, well, that he just couldn’t miss the opportunity to share his knowledge ) so he decided to help me.

Our first approach was to use “Columns”. Found under the “Format” menu, it’s a neat feature that let you format your document into columns. The idea was that each page will have 2 columns, that will represent the pages in the booklet, and that the page will fold in between them. We discussed this option a bit, and I started my work. It basically consisted of having 2 open documents at a time – the original and the columned – and having to mix and match, using copy-paste, the different pages from the original, into the appropriate columns. It was certainly doable, but at the same time a nightmare, prone to errors and limits further editing.

Stephen then had an epiphany – he introduced me to a very cool feature in word called textbox linking. Apparently, it is possible to link two (or more) textboxes – in a certain order – so that when the text entered to the first textbox exceeds the textbox’s space, it flows into the next textbox in order. He sent me a file aptly named “Ben is so lucky to have me.doc” – I sure was. The file consisted of two large textboxes, set in a landscape oriented page, with equal margins etc.

From there, I’ve create my 7 pages booklet “template” [Edit - I thought that I should post a sample template , so here it is (left-to-right version) - click me], using linked textboxes, ordered as explained above. Now, all that was left was to paste the original document inside the first textbox, cut everything after the last line on the last textbox (it’s the rest of the document that won’t fit in the current booklet), print, and repeat.

The time was about 21:30, and I had started to make several print attempts.

As seen in the picture, by 1:00AM I had 3 booklets printed and arranged.

2:25AM, stitching the booklets together, using the method explained in Here with some improvisation.

3:05AM – all done stitching, applied some glue over the stitches using improvised clamps. One hour left for the 12 hours mark – and I went to sleep . Well, I cheated on the title – it took a bit more than 24 Hours because you have to wait for the glue to dry. However, I think that now I can cut most of the time that went into research and printing failures, and meet the 24 hours limit.

Got up at 10:15AM – by now the glue has mostly dried, and we have a perfect (in first-time DIY scale…) cover-less book !

Time to create the cover. I cut three pieces of cardboard (not sure if that’s the right term, only familiar with the Hebrew name for it), two 16cm x 22cm for the sides and one 1.5cm x 22cm for the spine. I connected them using electric tape (that’s what I had around), the result :

Finally, applied glue to the cover and the spine, and let dry between two heavy books (with some metal parts on the stitched booklets, pushing them downwards):

It’s 11:20AM, so that’s 12 hours + 5 minutes. Now we just have to wait for the glue to dry, and then maybe decorate the cover.

At 16:00 – 24 hours mark – the glue was not fully dried, but I had to leave the house, and it was not only until around 22:00 that I had to deliver the present. So yes, not really 24 hours, as stated above, but it can be done in 24 hours !

I aimed (yeah right) for an underground look and feel, so I was ok with the cardboard and electric tape cover, but for the next time I’ll try to achieve higher quality (by covering it with some decorative paper etc). I’d also leave two empty pages, at the beginning and the end, to glue to the cover in order to secure the cover better, and hide the internal spine.

Anyway, I’ve linked to the sites that helped me, here are my thanks. I also greatly thank Stephen who really saved me. This post is getting way too long and unfocused, so if I find anything missing or not detailed enough, I’ll post a follow-up.

I can just tell you that the gift was a success , and that the cover fell off . It says on the cover of my glue ( I used carpenter’s glue, figured that both paper and cardboard are made of wood guess I should have used PVC glue ) that it takes 12-24 to completely dry, well, that’s a lesson for next time.

Ben