radioteacher
New member
I have been a guitar player much longer then a radio operator. (For the record, I do not play that well....but I still have fun) My first electric guitar and amp was a new Silver Anniversary Stratocaster and a 135 Watt Ultralinear Twin Reverb. (I still have both) I was young and wanted to play rock with distortion, in the end I could not have picked a cleaner combination of gear. It was really loud...and still clean.
With an LPB1 pedal I could start to overload the front end to get the pedal to dirty up the Twin Reverb. So in the summer of 1981, I built an electric guitar to drive my amp harder. Using the neck and a neck pickup from a Electra Workingman guitar, and a DiMarzio Super II as a lead pickup, I started the build. I bought a slab of mahogany from a local lumber yard for the body and put my wood working/routing skills to test. The bridge is a Badass wrap around and the knobs are for a telecaster.
I am surprised now that I even attempted such a thing. No Internet, I was not near any major city, all I had was a nice set of wood working tools, a local library, three music stores (about 50 miles away for some parts like the bridge and neck plate) and Guitar Player magazine.
To make sure I could drive the clean amp, I documented the LPB1 and built the circuit on a tiny board with the resistors standing up and put it in the guitar. I would turn it on with a push-pull volume knob that was the LPB1 boost pot. Finally, I would place LPB1 in the circuit by flipping a mini toggle switch. With the LPB1 powered off I could use the toggle switch to mute the guitar.
After all of this...I had nice distortion from a really clean amp at ear bleeding levels. I still have the guitar below, play it from time to time and marvel at this thing a kid built. The guitar finish is DuPont Imron from an auto parts store.
My Blue Guitar.
So I was hacking guitars and pedals in the early 1980's.
Then came the radio thing. With my radio hobby I collected a lot of parts. Some diodes I have are Vericap diodes that change capacitance with voltage. These were used to modulate FM transmitters so that they could transmit data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicap Some of the audio parts I have went into these radio data modems.
I wonder if vericaps (100 to 500 pf) could be used to modulate or set the tone of a circuit for a guitar pedal??? Maybe they would clip musically or not?
Here are some of the parts I have in stock.
-RT
#1 What is this diode?
#2 What is this diode?
These were used in crystal radio sets. I think they are 1N34A's
Look like 1N4148's to me.
I have two drawers full of 2N3904's.
I have six MPSA13's. What to build???
With an LPB1 pedal I could start to overload the front end to get the pedal to dirty up the Twin Reverb. So in the summer of 1981, I built an electric guitar to drive my amp harder. Using the neck and a neck pickup from a Electra Workingman guitar, and a DiMarzio Super II as a lead pickup, I started the build. I bought a slab of mahogany from a local lumber yard for the body and put my wood working/routing skills to test. The bridge is a Badass wrap around and the knobs are for a telecaster.
I am surprised now that I even attempted such a thing. No Internet, I was not near any major city, all I had was a nice set of wood working tools, a local library, three music stores (about 50 miles away for some parts like the bridge and neck plate) and Guitar Player magazine.
To make sure I could drive the clean amp, I documented the LPB1 and built the circuit on a tiny board with the resistors standing up and put it in the guitar. I would turn it on with a push-pull volume knob that was the LPB1 boost pot. Finally, I would place LPB1 in the circuit by flipping a mini toggle switch. With the LPB1 powered off I could use the toggle switch to mute the guitar.
After all of this...I had nice distortion from a really clean amp at ear bleeding levels. I still have the guitar below, play it from time to time and marvel at this thing a kid built. The guitar finish is DuPont Imron from an auto parts store.
My Blue Guitar.
So I was hacking guitars and pedals in the early 1980's.
Then came the radio thing. With my radio hobby I collected a lot of parts. Some diodes I have are Vericap diodes that change capacitance with voltage. These were used to modulate FM transmitters so that they could transmit data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicap Some of the audio parts I have went into these radio data modems.
I wonder if vericaps (100 to 500 pf) could be used to modulate or set the tone of a circuit for a guitar pedal??? Maybe they would clip musically or not?
Here are some of the parts I have in stock.
-RT
#1 What is this diode?
#2 What is this diode?
These were used in crystal radio sets. I think they are 1N34A's
Look like 1N4148's to me.
I have two drawers full of 2N3904's.
I have six MPSA13's. What to build???
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