Unwrapping

I may be talking out the side of my neck.

I was unhappy with the sound of my Ibanez with Power Sound pick ups. I used a few computer programs such Guitar FX, GTR, and GNU Guitar. While I could clean the sound some, I was unhappy and was unwilling to install $500 of pickups in a $300 guitar.

What I did was design and build an inline cable preamplifier in which all active components are mounted in the 1/4" jack that is inserted into the guitar. I used an XLR jack to connect to the power box, which contains 2 resistors, two capacitors, and a 9 volt battery. This had the effect of turning passive pickups into active pickups and has the advantage of being able to be used with any instrument. The XLR can be plugged into a pre/mixer board or into effects pedals, or for that matter, if you wish, you can build a cable to use it on microphones.

Now, I can turn the guitar volume down to 1 and 2 without loosing the tonal qualities of the axe, and it sounds far more beefy and bright; software effects packages sound much better. The unit is designed to emulate a Fender 12AJX preamplifier input. If driven to clipping, it produces a soft clip in which the extremes of the signal are compressed and rounded, rathe than cut off.

I am not a good enough player to effectively demonstrate the unit. I did take to the local practice hall and let several much better musicians demo it, both with my axe and theirs, ditto with the amps. Out of 20 guitarists, only one did not like it.

The reason I designed my own unit was that I tested many so called solutions and was unhappy with them all. A great advantage is that if you have a collectors guitar, bango, mandarin, whatever, you do not have to destroy the collectors value by changing components.

Lets See - "NEW" guitar body, Strings, in a new environment --- Ya I bet you had to re-tune it several times. Good info would be did you have to re-tune AS much, the more you used it? I agree with the other poster, what was the sound like?????

Also how many concerts have you been to and NOT see a tech grab a guitar from someone every few (if not after everyone)songs. They take em back stage and check strings for signs of eminent breakage and to re-tune them....

a "good looking guitar" is one thing, but a good idea would be for the reviewer to record the guitar to her laptop and then upload what's recorded so we can HEAR what the guitar SOUNDS like. isn't that what a guitar is about? the SOUND?