The setup:
A friend of mine is having a halloween party and I want to do something steampunk-y. A google image search for “steampunk” showed me a guitar, which gave me an idea:
Buy a cheap beater guitar, a miniature amp (like an orange or a pignose or something), maybe one or two effects pedals (a metal zone and/or a chorus).
Take the electronics and speaker out of their respective casings and re-mount them in the body of the guitar.
Hard wire the pickup (I assume I’ll have to use only one to make room for the electronic stuff) and the electronics together. With a little bit of creative routing, some painting, and maybe a few extra plumbing fixtures I’ll have a sweet self-contained steampunk guitar.
So…given that what I’ve just typed everything I’ve thought of or know about the process, what am I overlooking? (Like, will I need to shield the amp from the pickups? I’d think so, but then what do I know about electricity??)
Thanks!
Nothing jumps out, **EJ **- sounds like a fun idea. Remember that your separate components - the guitar, the effects and the amp - are normally connected via patch cords, so you would need to accommodate those in your design, but I suspect you are ahead of me on that.
Regarding shielding, grounding and all that jazz - I would just experiment. The components all connect with cords in a normal situation so the question would be how would that change if you pull the guts of the effect box and stick them in a “steampunk” cavity or device that is part of the guitar’s body…
Tons of luck and keep us posted.
By the way - I have come across photos of guitars that look very steampunky - I bet some Googling would turn up ideas and maybe even notes from folks who have done it before you…
Earthworm Jim, I’d think that the components - especially the speaker – might take up a good deal of space in a solidbody. Maybe you could start with a guitar designed like a Strat that’s already mostly pickguard. Just route as much space as you can under the pickguard, install your components, then replace the pickguard. A strat has three pickups, you could just narrow that down to one pickup and use the space where the other two pickups were to put in a speaker. You might also buy a blank strat pickguard, give it a steampunky paint job, and cut whatever holes you need for your components. Finally, you’ll need some reasonable way to replace the batteries in this thing; I don’t think removing the strings and pickguard every time is going to be very convenient, so you should be thinking about perhaps a hatch in the back or somesuch where a nine-volt (or several) go.
If you like using a Strat as your starting point, here’s a place that’ll sell you one cheap, and I’ve heard it’s a pretty good guitar for the money.
This one is beyond awesome.
I was thinking a fixed-bridge strat-style guitar will probably work best. But, I’ve currently got 3 projects in various states of non-completion around the house; the missus will be irritated if I add a fourth. I’ve already got an old Ibanez in pieces in the garage, which I might have to re-purpose for this project. It was routed H-S-H so it shouldn’t be too much work to route out the space between the front two pickups. We’ll see what happens.
I’m scouring the internet to find the smallest-but-most-useful components I can come up with. GFS has this nifty little gadget which offers some interesting tone options as well as giving me a low impedance signal. So that opens up the amplification possibilities.
I think the Orange is going to end up being too bulky. I don’t think I can separate the speaker from the amp (the back appears to be all one piece, so doing so may be pointless even if it is possible) and the depth is too much. Any thoughts or recommendations on an amp solution that’s tiny, loud, and high-quality would be appreciated.
On a side note, I did a google image search with my son (who’s currently into steampunk stuff) for steampunk guitar, and now it’s a father-son project. Awesome! 
Quickie search at Musician’s Friend digs up a few, here’s a similar search at Zzzounds. Obviously some of those are only small in comparison to a bigger version, but quite a few are pretty small. I’ve no personal experience with any of these, but someone here (E-Sabbath?) had a Honeytone that they were fond of. The ones I’ve seen mostly have a distortion sound of some sort (with probably some okay sounding, some dreadful), so you may not need that tone circuit you linked to.
I wonder if you could save some space by finding a power-pack battery holder that you could clip to your belt, then you route that power into the guitar via a mini-jack of some sort?
Thanks squeegee. I like the look of the honeytone, it seems easy to take apart & the bits look small enough to work with, and it gets good reviews. What more can I ask for?
That said, I pored over the GFS page some more, and at first blush they seem to have everything I could ask for. A pot-sized 2.5 watt, 9v amp and they’ve got several onboard effect choices designed to be wired up in pre-existing routes. I really like the idea of using the GFS stuff, because it is small and requires minimal re-routing.
But, the sales guy was less than helpful in recommending a speaker for the amp. He said “As far as what speakers to use we really dont have any info on that. Its more up to you what you would want.”
…
Well, obviously I want it to sound like a JCM800 or a Triple Rectifier or a Legacy ;). Seriously though, I’m trying to get the best possible sound I can out of this thing and I don’t really even know what questions I should ask.
What is the best[sup]1[/sup] 4-inch or smaller speaker for this application? Is there any signficant difference between car speakers, stereo speakers, and guitar speakers? I might be able to fit a 4x10 car speaker in the body if I position it just so, but should I? How about a 2-way 4-inch speaker like this one? Would 1 amp and 1 large-ish speaker be better than two amps and two small speakers (I’d think yes, for reproducing lower frequencies, but then again what do I know?)?
In the end, is there only so much you can do at this scale & will I just be better off ripping the guts out of a honeytone and sticking them in this thing?
As always, thanks!
- Yeah, I know, for certain values of best.
