Hacking

 

Here is a fun one I put down in the basement and forgotten about....   One lovely spring/summer day I had just read an article about someone who was developing plans for musical instruments requiring minimalist tools, materials, and expertise. The idea being to help bring music to developing economies and the like where expensive instruments are unlikely to be feasible.

Dan Young and David Pierce stopped by the house and we chatted about how interesting this concept was. So we decided to take a crack at it.   We made an electric guitar using a pine board for the body, held together with screws; tuners made from eye bolts and wing nuts; pickup made from the magnet in an old broken hardrive and the coil from an old-fashion "wall wort" power supply & held together with duct tape; and wrapped the whole thing in nylon string (fishing line, weed wacker string? I don't really remember) to make frets.

 Plugged it into an amp and it worked (for rather generous interpretation of the word "worked").  The tuners are perhaps not the finest I have ever used.  The frets are a suggestion of where a note may be, and they easily move.   But it does indeed make a rather glorious noise.  Dave and I were not particularly successful at "making music" with it, but Dan managed a rather excellent gritty blues riff (I.e something that was recognizable as music)

Looks like I swiped one of the eye bolts, possibly for whatever project I had actually bought them for.  The duct tape needs to be refreshed as well, it is now hitting the strings.