Post your DIY Musical Instruments/Amps here!

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Joined 2007
My Groovy Guitar amp nearly finished:

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A couple of videos: YouTube - DIY Guitar Amp

And: YouTube - DIY Guitar Amp - dirty.m2ts
 
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Well, this piece of equipment does't really classify as a musical instrument, but I couldn't find any other suitable thread. Here's my very first diy audio project; a slinky spring reverb:

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This was a project that I had in my mind for a couple of weeks. The driver element is from a Toyota Yaris and the pick-up element is some lo-fi no name speaker i picked up from a shabby second hand shop. I made it mostly as a fun experiment, but actually i think it turned out rather cool! at some point I might try out some different springs.

It sounds shitty and lo-fi, just as it should :)

Here is a little sound sample, some tunes played on a microkorg virtual analog: Spring Reverb Sample by Axelvilhelm on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

And here are some more pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/113110324294877207855/Spring2011#
 
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It strikes me that with this basic setup, you could easily get a wide range of effects depending on spring tension, spring material, damping...

That's true, and I also discovered that varying the the level that feeds the speaker element quite significantly changes how the spring colors the sound. The loose slinky is quite problematic, since it amplifies frequencies in the low and low mid range, and you might get some unwanted tones. But on the other hand, sometimes that might just be what's needed, for instance to give a sound thickness.
 
From the picture it looks as if you put longitudinal waves into it, don't you ? Some old-fashioned spring reverb that I still have somewhere does use torsion on those springs. You might be able to test this as well just by turning your "transducers" by 90 degrees. You might have to change your suspension though to one that allows a little torsion. For an experiment this could be made with fine thread IMO.

Transducers that generate and detect torsion could even be built with DIY methods IMO. Or maybe some micromotors like the ones used for toys might be misused for that purpose.

Regards

Charles
 
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


I know the picture quality's not great (iPod camera), but there's my 4x10" cabinet + head.

I used a 4x8" cabinet and chiselled out in front of the speakers where needed so they'd have room to move. Sealed box, biamped so the vertical pairs are in parallel, each side plugged into an amplifier channel on the head.
Using one side for an iPod occasionally (dual channel amp, each with a seperate fx loop) to play along to.

See here for pictures of inside the cabinet.

Chris
 
some of my favorite gear

here are some pics of my gear my harps and "shaker mad dog" harmonica mic with my homebuilt (from a kit but then i modded it lots) 5e3fender. and for bass my 60's president bassman with 70's jansen 2x12 cab.with my cheepass chinesse Mannix Bass plays sweet as and real lite.
 

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DIY Tube Bass Preamp

My latest DIY bass preamp, using
two 6SN7s for the Aikido section and one 6SL7 for the front end and tone controls, Jensen input and output transformers, and the Welborne PS-8 power supply. Active bass and mids, passive treble. This was my first go at using Spice extensively before my build, and later testing of the FRC confirmed pretty decent correlation -- better than expected given my rather limited model.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.