Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup makemicromusic The birth of an instrument

Dear Makers,

I just had to share this moment.

I am doing the final assembly of my second instrument of this type --
a tubular electric guitar -- but it's the first microtonal one. It is
an 8-string baritone guitar in a 7-limit schismic tuning designed by
Robin Perry of "Just About" fame.
http://tonalsoft.com/enc/j/just-about.aspx

When I saw the guitar laid out on its black cloth as I was stringing
it up, at first I made jokes with myself like:
[spoken with an outrageous Transylvanian accent]
"More Woltage Igor! My creation must live!" Zzzt Zzzt.

And then I thought, "You know, this is a sacred moment". And I got all
wet eyed and thought, "Robin should be here". I'm just the midwife. So
I'm sharing it in this way, with a photo:

http://dkeenan.com/Choob/TheBirthOfChoob2.jpg

I also realised that if there is a particular moment when it stops
being a piece of pipe and becomes a guitar, it is when the ballast
chamber has been filled with damp sand and sealed, and you heft it and
you feel the new center of gravity -- all the way down at the 24th and
last fret.

For more information on these guitars see this thread in the "tuning"
Yahoo group.
/tuning/topicId_70434.html#70434

-- Dave Keenan

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

beautiful looking! i hope it is more than two strings though. seems like you could do any tuning on it or are there frets

Dave Keenan wrote:
>
> Dear Makers,
>
> I just had to share this moment.
>
> I am doing the final assembly of my second instrument of this type --
> a tubular electric guitar -- but it's the first microtonal one. It is
> an 8-string baritone guitar in a 7-limit schismic tuning designed by
> Robin Perry of "Just About" fame.
> http://tonalsoft.com/enc/j/just-about.aspx > <http://tonalsoft.com/enc/j/just-about.aspx>
>
> When I saw the guitar laid out on its black cloth as I was stringing
> it up, at first I made jokes with myself like:
> [spoken with an outrageous Transylvanian accent]
> "More Woltage Igor! My creation must live!" Zzzt Zzzt.
>
> And then I thought, "You know, this is a sacred moment". And I got all
> wet eyed and thought, "Robin should be here". I'm just the midwife. So
> I'm sharing it in this way, with a photo:
>
> http://dkeenan.com/Choob/TheBirthOfChoob2.jpg > <http://dkeenan.com/Choob/TheBirthOfChoob2.jpg>
>
> I also realised that if there is a particular moment when it stops
> being a piece of pipe and becomes a guitar, it is when the ballast
> chamber has been filled with damp sand and sealed, and you heft it and
> you feel the new center of gravity -- all the way down at the 24th and
> last fret.
>
> For more information on these guitars see this thread in the "tuning"
> Yahoo group.
> /tuning/topicId_70434.html#70434 > </tuning/topicId_70434.html#70434>
>
> -- Dave Keenan
>
> -- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@...>

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

It seems like movable frets could be made.
but regardless this gives you the possibility of bowing the instrument

Dave Keenan wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com>, Kraig Grady > <kraiggrady@...> wrote:
> >
> > beautiful looking! i hope it is more than two strings though. seems
> like
> > you could do any tuning on it or are there frets
>
> Hi Kraig,
>
> Thanks. Yes there are more than 2 strings. :-) There are 8. I had
> threaded up the first two when I though I should capture the moment.
> You can see the holes in the end-cap where the tuners for the 8
> strings will go. The tuners are the brass screws with holes drilled
> through their heads that you can see in the foreground.
>
> The two that are already in place through the end cap are the
> truss-wires to counteract the bending moment of the strings. I'm just
> holding the cap aside so you can see into the tube and see the cap
> that seals the sand into the ballast chamber.
>
> And yes there are frets. They just look like an orange fuzz in that
> photo. You can see a completed guitar (but in 12-equal) in full
> frontal here:
> http://dkeenan.com/Music/MadMax2.jpg > <http://dkeenan.com/Music/MadMax2.jpg>
>
> -- Dave K
>
> -- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@...>

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

sounds like a secure way to do frets . i guess one could have a selection of scales, but i am all for really diving into a tuning as opposed to the endless array of one night stands.
The latter gives one an idea of what one wants, but when you have a physical instrument in front of you, the tuning becomes so much a part of the personality one associates with it.
does it have much sound without amplifications.
Someone once recommended pvc for making tube shaped instruments. i assume that is what the tube is made of?

Dave Keenan wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com > <mailto:MakeMicroMusic%40yahoogroups.com>, Kraig Grady > <kraiggrady@...> wrote:
> >
> > It seems like movable frets could be made.
>
> I haven't been able to figure out how to make frets that are movable
> when you want to move them but can be locked in place while playing.
> But yes, you could just tie loops of the nylon monofilament tightly
> with a suitable knot.
>
> The fixed frets you see consist of a single piece of nylon
> monofilament that zig-zags up the tube. With the zigs on the outside
> (going 180 degrees around the pipe) and the zags on the inside going
> diagonally from the end of one fret to the start of the next, with
> enormous tension and a tiny hole drilled in the tube at the midpoint
> of each fret as a locating notch.
>
> > but regardless this gives you the possibility of bowing the
> > instrument
>
> Yes indeed.
>
> -- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/index.html>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@...>

🔗Jon Szanto <jszanto@...>

🔗Robin Perry <jinto83@...>

Hi,

Just a quick update: I picked up my Choob from Dave a few weeks ago
and would have had a bit more to pass on to you all had I not sliced
my thumb at work - four stitches worth. I will say that I'm very
pleased so far and hope to have some little dittie recorded sometime
in the near future.

Regards,

Robin

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Keenan" <d.keenan@...>
wrote:
>
> Dear Makers,
>
> I just had to share this moment.
>
> I am doing the final assembly of my second instrument of this
type --
> a tubular electric guitar -- but it's the first microtonal one. It
is
> an 8-string baritone guitar in a 7-limit schismic tuning designed
by
> Robin Perry of "Just About" fame.
> http://tonalsoft.com/enc/j/just-about.aspx
>
> When I saw the guitar laid out on its black cloth as I was
stringing
> it up, at first I made jokes with myself like:
> [spoken with an outrageous Transylvanian accent]
> "More Woltage Igor! My creation must live!" Zzzt Zzzt.
>
> And then I thought, "You know, this is a sacred moment". And I got
all
> wet eyed and thought, "Robin should be here". I'm just the
midwife. So
> I'm sharing it in this way, with a photo:
>
> http://dkeenan.com/Choob/TheBirthOfChoob2.jpg
>
> I also realised that if there is a particular moment when it stops
> being a piece of pipe and becomes a guitar, it is when the ballast
> chamber has been filled with damp sand and sealed, and you heft it
and
> you feel the new center of gravity -- all the way down at the 24th
and
> last fret.
>
> For more information on these guitars see this thread in
the "tuning"
> Yahoo group.
> /tuning/topicId_70434.html#70434
>
> -- Dave Keenan
>

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@...>

Dear MMMers,

You've probably read the story of the extraterrestrial origins of the
Choob (tubular guitar) at
/tuning/topicId_70434.html#70434
but I thought you might be interested in the cover story we came up
with for the FBI in case we lost our alfoil hats. ;-)

My 9 year old daughter wanted an electric guitar. And she'd earned it.
First by learning to play a short-scale nylon-string acoustic I bought
her, and then my full size steel-string acoustic. And so I was
thinking about building one. But the thought of all that work shaping
a wooden neck, and accurately setting the height of all those frets by
hand, was too horrible to contemplate. And buying the blank parts
would end up costing more than an entire good quality Chinese guitar.
Besides, I decided that a neck-thru-body design was the only way to
go. From an engineering perspective, when you need something rigid to
hold strings in constant tension It seems crazy to make it in two
pieces and then bolt (or heaven forbid, glue) them together.

In the end I bought her an Epiphone Les Paul Special II and the Roland
Microcube you see in the photo, but it had got me to thinking, there
must be a better way.

"Our life is frittered away by detail. ... Simplify, simplify" - Henry
David Thoreau.

I had some pieces of PVC pipe in various diameters lying around from
my swimming-pond filtration-system development.
/swimming-ponds/

I thought, "I wonder just how bad it would be to have such extreme
curvature on a fingerboard". I picked up some 40 mm and thought, "Well
it's about the same thickness as a guitar neck but there's no way you
could make chords with that curvature". I picked up some 65 mm and
thought, "No problem about the curvature there, but it's just too big
to grip comfortably". Then I picked up some 50 mm and thought, "That's
ju...st right", and then I fell asleep and a little while later the
bears came home and father bear said ...

Oops. No. Wrong story. I thought, "That might be bearable" (no pun
intended).

There was no way conventional tuning machines were going to work with
this. Then I came across Ned Steinberger's in-line designs on the net
and went out and bought some 1/8" brass screws and drilled holes
through their heads and got a nut driver to adjust them with.

Rather than using double ball strings, like Stenbergers, I just
clamped the other end with electrical screw terminals. The bridge and
saddle were easy -- just some pipe offcuts slit and expanded and
sprung on top of each other around the pipe. Since the strings pass
thru holes in the pipe near the ends, no nut was needed, only a zero fret.

Frets took me longer to figure out. I initially wrapped a short length
of steel fencing tie-wire around the pipe and twisted its ends
together. But the sharp ends were dangerous. However I played it for a
while like this, as a very quiet acoustic guitar with only three frets
(zero, second and third). This was enough to prove that it _was_
playable. Really surprisingly so.

But I think friends and family who visited the house at this time
though I was completely mad. I'd say "See my new guitar design", and
they'd see this bit of grey drainpipe with bits of fencing-wire
twisted around it and say things like "In what sense is that a
guitar". Hee hee. No imagination :-)

For fretting I eventually hit on something so simple it made me laugh.
I used one long piece of hard nylon monofilament. This is sold either
as game-fishing leader or as cutting line for weedtrimmers. I just
drilled matching holes on opposite sides of the pipe, at the required
fret positions, and laced it up! I start with a knot on the inside at
the 24th fret and put enormous tension on it as I go, and then clamp
it off inside at the zero fret in the same way I do the strings, with
an electrical screw terminal.

Next problem was the pickup. Obviously no standard magnetic pickup
would match the curvature. I considered winding my own -- 8000 turns
of very fine wire -- no thanks. And they would have to be exremely low
profile since cutting into the pipe would weaken it too much. I
considered optical methods. I looked at ads for flexible
piezo-electric pickups for mounting under the saddle on acoustic
guitars, but they were US$250. I tried putting a condenser mike inside
the tube, but the feedback was awful.

In the end, another hilariously simple solution. I had no idea if it
was going to work equally for all strings or if it was going to need a
preamp to boost the level or what, but I took the 20 mm piezo-electric
disk out of a $3.50 alarm buzzer, filed a flat area on the pipe under
the middle of the bridge, glued the piezo disk there, glued a disk of
PVC on top of it and glued the curved PVC bridge back on top of that
so it was supported about 0.5 mm above the pipe. I hooked it up to the
Roland Microcube with alligator clips and it sounded awesome! Cleaner
than any magnetic pickup, all strings equal and bright and plenty of
volume, no preamp needed.

I was so thrilled at the sound I took it to work (electronics design
and repair) with the alligor clips still connecting it to the
Microcube and handed it to one Anthony Pink at morning tea time. He's
a far more accomplished guitarist than I. I thought to myself, "It's
probably good enough for me, but a real guitarist will find the
fingerboard curvature and neck thickness too awkward to deal with".
But I, and everyone else there, were totally blown away by what Anto
could do with it. I swear it took him no more than a minute to
accomodate to the unfamiliar shape. Geez humans are amazing.

Then it was onto sorting out the ergomomics (balance, strap anchors,
leg rest, anti-rotation), and aesthetics. Then an internal truss-wire
system to counteract bending of the PVC tube. But I won't bore you
with further details of the development process.

As you can see, it now looks like something from outer space. The
whole guitar is only 130 mm longer than its scale length and weighs
only 1.3 kg. Almost half of that weight is in wet sand, as ballast and
acoustic mass/damping, inside the bottom quarter of the pipe. There is
no impediment to playing far down the neck and you can play it with a
violin bow thanks to the curvature. It also has a road case which is,
you guessed it, a larger diameter pipe with screw on inspection cap
and padding.

Development is ongoing. I'm currently fitting a neon tube inside one
to light up its clear frets at night. It will be powered via the spare
channel of a stereo cable.

-- Dave Keenan

🔗threesixesinarow <CACCOLA@...>

🔗Carl Lumma <ekin@...>

🔗Prent Rodgers <prentrodgers@...>

🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@...>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Prent Rodgers"
<prentrodgers@...> wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Dave Keenan" <d.keenan@> wrote:
> Wow! And Wow again.
> http://dkeenan.com/Music/MadMax2.jpg is beautiful.
> Could you post more about the truss design?
>

Thanks Prent. The truss is critical to turning a short lived prototype
into a (hopefully) long lived instrument. Not enough time has passed
yet to know just how effective the current design is.

The PVC tube is rigid enough that when first constructed it does not
bend significantly under string tension. Just enough to give a
fingerboard "relief" of about 0.5 mm. But without some counteracting
forces it will slowly creep (over a period of weeks or months). The
rate depends on temperature.

The current truss design involves two steel wires 1.25 mm in diameter.
Two wires lets you control bending in two dimensions. The truss wires
are treated in a similar way to the strings. i.e. At the nut end they
pass through the end cap and are clamped with electrical-type screw
terminals (painted gold). And they are tensioned at the bridge end in
the same way the strings are tuned -- by turning the nuts on the ends
of brass screws poking out of the end cap. The truss wires are
threaded through holes in the screw heads.

Except of course the truss wires are _inside_ the tube and the screws
and nuts are larger than those used for the strings.

It doesn't become a truss until you add compression elements to push
on the inside of the tube and try to make it bend the other way (the
analog of the bridge and nut). There are two. One is just past the
24th fret and doubles as a wall of the ballast chamber. It is a PVC
end cap for a smaller diameter pipe that has grooves cut near one edge
for the two truss wires and is solvent-cemented into place inside the
tube. The other is positioned between the 7th and 8th frets and is a
20 mm long piece of approximately 30 mm dia PVC pipe cemented to the
inside of the fingerboard, with grooves in one edge for the truss wires.

I'm happy to give more detail, but I'll wait to see if you want it. Or
if you have specific questions.

-- Dave K