I had this nice walnut board lying around, and also had committed to playing a little gig at a series my friends in Fort Collins run called Noise Floor. So why not make the most out of that hard deadline and try to make an instrument out of the board so I can play it at the show? Given how little I know about electric instruments, this came out surprisingly well, and sounds surprisingly good thanks to the stereo contact mics + pre-amp.
Here are the main features:
- Solid walnut body
- Moveable frets
- 2 embedded contact microphones
- DIY single coil pickup
- Hot-swappable pickup system
- Walnut + brass frets w/ 3D printed "legs" that go through the slots
- Spring on the bottom for sustain
- Custom stereo contact mic PCB
And a demo vid if you want to hear some audio samples.
Here are the main features:
- Solid walnut body
- Moveable frets
- 2 embedded contact microphones
- DIY single coil pickup
- Hot-swappable pickup system
- Walnut + brass frets w/ 3D printed "legs" that go through the slots
- Spring on the bottom for sustain
- Custom stereo contact mic PCB
I used 3D printed router jigs for the slots and other cutouts. For my first time trying this in earnest, and it worked pretty well.
Here is the raw board after surfacing and some sanding.
Here you can see the slots on the back, and how the frets are attached. The black knobs are 3D printed caps superglued onto M3 bolts. These feed up into a captured nut within the 3D printed fret attachment.
The pickup was created by 3D printing the bobbin, sticking some magnetic pins in it, and winding it with a hand drill jig. I ran out of wire so wasn't able to spool it completely, hence the not great sound. Thankfully I made it modular, so it's easy to pop out whenever I get inspired to make a new pickup. Harbor freight lever wire connectors do the Job. I used large ones in case I want to experiment with running multiple pickups in parallel, which I think is a thing you can do?
The pickups are mounted on a spring .... for the purposes of tremolo, was the idea. The problem here is that the contact mics pic up every little spring squeak, so it's not too practical to move the pickup around while playing unless just using the pickup output.
And finally a closeup of one end so you can see the nice walnut grain pattern. I finished it with a hardwax oil - Rubio Monocoat. It has a nice satin finish which I enjoy.
In summary, it's probably easier to make an electric stringed instrument than you think. If you don't want to bother with the DIY pickup, just buy one from a used store or online for like 15 bucks. If you don't want to do that, just grab a piezo disc or 2, solder them to an old aux cable that's been snipped, and you're done. So go give it a shot.
