Category: DIY

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Acoustic Amps Bass DIY Effects guitar

Mutant Beauty Pageant:
Choose the “Winner!”

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

At the moment, I’m particularly thankful that, despite being a jaded old musician, I can still encounter instruments that, um, take my breath away. And if you can view all the Mutant Beauty Pageant contestants without spewing your beverage all over your computer, you’re made of stern stuff indeed.

Exaggeration? You be the judge. Literally!

As specified in the “rules,” the submission deadline has arrived. Now it’s time to choose the most beautiful mutant. Just select your three favorites from the photo gallery below.

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Choose the “Winner!””
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Acoustic Amps Bass DIY Effects guitar

Mutant Beauty Pageant Update!

The end is nigh! But maybe not as nigh as originally planned…

Thanksgiving Day (that’s Nov. 24th to you non-U.S. residents) was the original deadline, but I’m going to extend it through the holiday weekend, till midnight, PST, on the 27th) for one simple reason: We want to HEAR some of these mutants!

C’mon — I know many of you are avid home recordists. Let’s have some audio to accompany the remarkable visuals! It doesn’t have to be a fancy production — just a little bit recorded into a phone will convey the true horror of these monstrosities express the unique musical qualities of each instrument.

Post your pics (and, I hope, audio) to the comments thread here. Meanwhile, I’ll be updating the astonishing photo gallery here.

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DIY Effects

Stompbox Decoration for the Impatient

Who has time, for, like, REAL decoration?
Who has time, for, like, REAL decoration?

Helpless with paint, brushes, spray cans, decals and varnish? Take the lazy way out and use stickers. My favorites: the mouth, nose, and eye images in in World Wide Fred’s Inanimate pack.

Sure, the images will rub off eventually, but that’s the glory of stickers! Just use an adhesive remover like Goof Off and do it all again!

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Acoustic Amps Bass DIY Effects Gigs guitar

Mutant Beauty Pageant: The Photo Gallery

Well, um, the entires in our Mutant Beauty Contest are certainly . . . something. Click the MORE button to open the slideshow. New beauties added daily!

Post your images to comments via a photo-sharing site, or email them to me. I’ll add each new mutant to the slideshow so the entire Internet can laugh at your abysmal taste admire your collecting and building skills.

You can review the “rules” here. The prize is still TBD, but I guarantee it’ll be every bit as . . . something as the beauties displayed here.

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DIY Effects Tonefiend DIY Club

DIY Club Project #3: Booster + Buffer

Here’s a demo for our third DIY project: a combination clean boost and buffer.

The project files are here. For other tips, tricks, and resources, as well as all the info on our first two projects, visit the Tonefiend DIY Club page.

This is a super-useful guitar tool. You’ll learn about how to add more options to your effects via switching. You’ll also discover a) what a buffer is, and b) whether you need to care. (Answer: maybe.)

And this concludes the initial set of DIY Club Projects. Now that we’ve learned some workbench basics, the next few projects will involve poking around inside your guitars, where it’s possible to do some real damage. Until then, keep your soldering irons tinned and your smoke alarms armed!

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Acoustic Amps Bass DIY Effects Gigs guitar Pickups

Mutant Beauty Pageant: Enter and “Win!”

It’s time for another contest!

I hereby announce the first Tonefiend Mutant Beauty Pageant.

I know many deadbeats with too much time on their hands musicians, and most of them have a thing for weird gear. I’m talking real freak-show stuff, the items that make anyone who walks into your music room shriek, “What the hell is that thing?”

Here’s the idea: You post your oddities, and the coolest/weirdest item wins. They can be anything music-related: guitars, basses, amps, effects, CDs or vinyl, music industry swag, some crazy DIY project—anything goes! The winner will receive—well, let’s just say something as weird and cool as the stuff being posted.

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DIY Effects Tonefiend DIY Club

Bulk Fuzz DIY Project Files

As promised, here are the project files for DIY Club Project #2: the bitchin’ Bulk Fuzz.

This nasty little fuzz bomb is fun to build and fun to play. Audition it here.

The project uses the same techniques introduced in Project #1, so if you survived that one, this should be smooth sailing. It’s also a great jumping-off point for custom designs, which you’ll get to explore in the course of the project. Bon Appétit!

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DIY Effects Tonefiend DIY Club

Simple But Deadly Fuzz
(Tonefiend DIY Club Project #2)

I swear, it’s practically worth learning DIY electronics just to build this one insanely simple, insanely great fuzz circuit. What I’m going to call the Bulk Fuzz is a variant on a popular DIY project known as the Bazz Fuss. A really smart guy from Finland named Christian H. figured out how to generate the scuzziest of fuzz tones from a simple transistor/diode pair. It’s a great circuit for modding and custom-tuning, and you’ll have a chance to mix your perfect fuzz cocktail over the course of this fun project.

Incredibly, I don’t know of any commercial manufactures who have co-opted this design. Which means, like they used to say on TV, “Not available in stores!”

Here’s a demo clip. Forewarned is forearmed.

If this sounds like your cup of dirt, please read this great article about the circuit and its variants. (It’s from a cool DIY site, home-wrecker.com/.) Using the techniques introduced in Project #1, you should be able to breadboard any of these and hear how they sound. In the meantime, I’ll be posting a step-by-step project PDF in the coming days. Check back here, or follow tonefiend on Twitter. UPDATE, 11.04.11:The files are here.

Categories
DIY guitar Pickups

Changing Three Pickups in Five Minutes
(and What It Sounds Like)

This is my kind of pickup change: the easy kind!

I got my hands on the new Seymour Duncan Everything Axe pickguard, which comes with three pre-installed Strat-format humbuckers (JB Jr., Duckbucker, and Little ’59). I’ve always avoided humbuckerized Strats because they remind of really bad ’80s bands. But I love the JB and ’59, so I figured, why not confront my prejudices?

I slapped the pickguard onto your basic Mexican Strat, and voilà! Instant coolness.

Here’s a little demo featuring all five pickup combinations. As the product name implies, this particular pickup trio yields many high-contrast colors. But I’m struck most by how much Strat flavor remains—there’s certainly no lack of shimmer and twang. I favored clean tones in the demo, just to deep-six my outdated stereotypes about harsh, compressed, over-distorted Strat humbucker sounds.

And it really did take about five minutes.

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DIY Effects Tonefiend DIY Club

Tonefiend DIY Club:
The Bad-Ass Distortion Has Arrived!

Warning: It’s fin-ished!

Here is the fourth and final part of the Tonefiend DIY Club’s first stompbox project: The Bad-Ass Distortion is a variation on the popular Electra circuit, beloved by many boutique builders. Once you box up the mess project, you too will be a boutique geek.

Here’s a sketchy little demo.