Crazy idea. Need help. Guitar with Midi In

[obiwanjacobi]

If you use the coils in a humbucking fashion, hum will be greatly reduced. If you only use the as single coils, it will depend on your surroundings.

You can power the guitar if you plug in the USB cable. If the battery lasted a while and you could use rechargeables, I don't mind messing with them.

Would you care to share your insights on passive switching system?

Thanx.

[Sascha Franck]

Would you care to share your insights on passive switching system?

Sure.
First off: I don't seem to need any out-of-phase switching. And fwiw, I'm not exactly impressed by the o-o-p settings that are demonstrated in the various "Game Changer" videos on YouTube.

My basic idea is to just combine a typical 3 single coil setup with a 2 humbucker setup.
Whether those single coils will be (and yes, I actually plan to build a guitar with all this somewhen this year) true single coils (the noise reduction would then be taken care of by a backplate silencing system) or pseudo-SC-sounding stacked humbucker (with which I am getting along quite fine in most situations) - I'll see. In any case, they will be switched by a 5-way super switch. The reason to use a super switch is that I can then add a little mini switch to change the PU combination in, say, the neck/middle position to neck/bridge.

The humbuckers will be some single coil sized humbuckers that are not supposed to sound like single coils but like humbuckers. Think along the lines of a Little 59, Cool or Hot Rails, whatever. There's some that pretty much sound like full sized humbuckers. They will be switched by a standard 3 way toggle.

The single coils will be placed pretty much in standard Strat positions, the humbuckers will then be placed in front or in the back of the SCs. I already did that in my G&L. I simply added an SC-sized HB in front of the bridge SC. Looks like that:

(fwiw, the PUs have been replaced since I took that pic, it's now 3 pseudo-SCs from Kinman and a Cool Rail for the humbucking part).
I'll be doing the same in the neck position.

The two switching systems will then be combined by another 3 way toggle.
That will result in:
3 sounds for the HBs alone.
6 sounds for the SCs alone (because I will modify the switching to 6 options as described above).
6x3=18 sounds for the combinations of HBs and SCs.
That makes up for 27 sounds in total. Of course, some of the HB/SC combinations most likely won't make too much sense, but some of them (such as neck SC and bridge HB or vice versa) defenitely will.

Even if this sounds like a lot of switches (and well, yes, there are 4 switches...), the general handling will be very easy. You will only need to think of a HB "layer" and a SC "layer", both controlled by what might be the most common and comfortable switches there are. And then you can just combine the two layers.

Regarding tone control, I think I would only do that for the humbuckers. During the last two decades, I noticed that I rarely ever even touched a tone control for any single coil sound. But I use tone controls quite a bit for humbuckers.

Fwiw, one of the reasons I'll be doing it that way is that I always had certain problems with the difference in volume when dealing with HBs that you can split. Soundwise, there's now models (such as one of the Duncan HBs) that are really like two fully sounding single coils, and while they are quite nice soundwise, when you switch between SC and HB, there's still a huge difference in volume. I prefer the HBs to just sound somewhat fatter and only a little bit louder. Parallel humbucking doesn't do the job, either, as it most often sounds a lot thinner than a serial humbucker.
So, having completely independent PUs for the HB and SC part will allow me to perfectly adjust the volumes between the two.

With such a switching, I'm sure I'd rarely need something else (as said, I never need out-of-phase - plus, I could of course add it).

And while I find that "Game Changer" thing interesting, in case I'd add such a circuit board into any of my guitars, it should rather do quite some more things but just switch my PUs in addition. Such as controlling a Sustainer PU, such as adding and controlling a Hex PU, such as sending out MIDI changes.
In case it's just about PU switching, my guitars will defenitely stay passive.

- Sascha

[Hink]

in case you missed it Sascha, one of the stickies in this forum has some great wiring mods for pick-ups

[Sascha Franck]

in case you missed it Sascha, one of the stickies in this forum has some great wiring mods for pick-ups

Well, didn't exactly missed it, but I'm quite sure about what my next PU combination will be like. And it doesn't exactly require much of whatever rewiring, either.

Thanks for the head up, though.

- Sascha

[obiwanjacobi]

Thanx Sasha for the explanation.

I am thinking of dropping this project. I probably need to invest a lot more time into it before I get it at a usable quality and that seems pointless with a the game changer on the market. I think they will be selling it as a kit soon enough.

Any reason to keep developing it?

[Sascha Franck]

I am thinking of dropping this project. I probably need to invest a lot more time into it before I get it at a usable quality and that seems pointless with a the game changer on the market. I think they will be selling it as a kit soon enough.

Not sure whether they'll sell it as a separate kit any day soon. Also, have you seen the huge wood routings the circuit board requires? That's certainly nothing anybody would do to whatever old-ish or even true vintage guitar.

Any reason to keep developing it?

I said so earlier in this thread: There's close to no "fully integrated" guitar/interface/computer system.
But then, I think that something such as that would require certain huge investments, so it's probably too much for any private person.

- Sascha

[obiwanjacobi]

.. have you seen the huge wood routings the circuit board requires? ..

No!?

Where did you see that?

Thanx.

[Sascha Franck]

No!?
Where did you see that?

I don't remember the video, but it was in one of those showcasing the Game Changer (I think 5 videos directly from Ernie Ball, each aroun 8-10 minutes long).

- Sascha

[obiwanjacobi]

I saw this video on YouTube. I was not planning to making it that large, but the idea is the same.

[Sascha Franck]

I saw this video on YouTube. I was not planning to making it that large, but the idea is the same.

In general: That is a fantastic idea.

Know what? Many many years ago, I tried something sort of similar. In the analog domain of course (I don't have the slightest idea of digital circuits and back then digital wasn't even remotely accessable for Joe Average).
What I did was sending out each PU signal separately (through a 4-pole sort of mic cable) and then switch the PUs right on my floor pedal. They could be combined in almost any way (pretty much like the Game Changer) and I even managed to get my amp switching via one single step as well.
The entire thing was built by a mate of mine (an electronics specialist). Basically it was nothing else but what you can find on programmable loop/switching system, just without MIDI. And it had to be "pre-programmed" by those little DIP switches.

Unfortunately, I don't have a single picture of that setup (as said, that was all *way* before digital was available to just about everybody).

And well, it didn't work too well, either. Tons of noise were introduced (most likely by the 4-pole cable carrying analog PU signals and the rather complexed routing inside the floor pedal switching thing) and in the end I also didn't find it too comfortable to not have any controls left on the guitar anymore.

If something like that was available with nowadays technique (especially with some proper controls on the guitar itself and of course without the noise that I experienced), I'd probably buy it in a heartbeat.

- Sascha