Guitar Noize - guitar news, crazy guitar designs and cool guitar videos

I’m always on the lookout for useful guitar accessories that aren’t a gimmick and when I first saw Big Bends Nut Sauce I was a little bit cautious (or is that stubborn?) thinking I could manage my tuning problems perfectly well with a pencil and a razor blade. Well now that I don’t own a guitar with a double locking tremelo anymore friction is more of an issue than before, yes I have locking tuners on each guitar but I still have nut and bridge saddle friction inherent in the design of guitars to deal with. What Big Bends Nut Sauce does is give you a lubricant that is incredibly easy to apply to the fiddly places on your guitar that need it. I should say by the way that this was not a freebie, I bought their Groove-Luber 1.5cc pack to use on my Suhr because I’d heard good things via Twitter. Well I certainly won’t be using pencil graphite again when I can buy a syringe of Nut Sauce for $25 (US) that will last for an extremely long time. I used it and intend to use it everytime I change my strings, which because I’m not a gigging guitarist and use Elixir strings is about once every 2 - 3 months, this little tube should last me a couple of years even with 3 guitars! I should point out too that there is a cheaper option, the Lil Luber Ultra .5cc is only $12.45 and if you are a heavy user such as a guitar tech, there is a Bench Luber 6cc available for $59.95.

Aside from their Nut Sauce products, Big Bends also offer a number of guitar maintenance products to help keep your guitars in tip top condition such as AXS Wipes (microfiber), Scratch Remover and the very cool looking Tech Station which I think is going to go on my Christmas list!

For more info head over to www.bigbends.com and make sure you check out their videos section to see Joe Satriani’s guitar tech using Big Bends products.

You can win this Electro-harmonix Big Muff Pi With Tone Wicker as part of the Blue Noize solo contest!

This is a first for me as I’m demoing 2 pedals at once, well ok one of them isn’t actually a pedal, maybe that should have been 2 products at once… there that’s better. So first up is the Electro-harmonix Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker for some crazy retro fuzz action and the second is the Sanyo Pedal Juice which I mentioned a little while ago on Guitar Noize and it is a rechargeable 9v power supply.

The Sanyo Pedal Juice is a clever invention because not only do you reap the benefits of using your pedals without the potential hum and noise from a mains power supply but you can daisy chain both of your DC outputs meaning you can power multiple medals at once. First thing I had to do was charge the Pedal Juice, this literally means just plugging it in to the mains with the supplied power cord and leaving it until the little LED goes from Red to Orange to Green and finally goes off, that means you are 100% charged and ready to go (roughly 3 hours). Ok so once you have it charged it is very simple to use, just plug in the attached cords and plug them into your pedal and switch the pedal juice on. If you are using a single Ananlog effect you will get about 50 hours from a charge, if like me you have a mixture of digital and analog effects on your board that draw all up hundreds of milliamps(mA) then you might only squeeze a couple of hours out of it between charges, but that is still plenty of time if you are gigging!

The Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker is basically a hot rodded version of the original Big Muff Pi, I incorrectly assumed in my demo above that to create the sound of the original you flick both the Tone and the Wicker switches off, apologies I’ve never used an original, in fact you need the Tone switch On. The Wicker switch opens up three high frequency filters to add more clarity and crispness to the distortion. Switching off the Tone completely bypasses the Tone circuit altogether so make sure you check your volume first because it gives the output a massive volume boost compared to with the Tone circuit on. I have tried to show as many tonal possibilities as I could in the demo above so I hope you enjoy my fuzzing riffs!

Electro-harmonix website
Sanyo Pedal Juice

Have you ever looked at your guitar and thought it looked a little bare? How about adding a Strattoos Tattoo? Despite the play on words name, Strattoos tattoos will actually fit most styles of guitar including, Les Pauls, Acoustics, Teles etc. and they currently have 12 designs to choose from. All of the designs are aimed at the punk/metal market I think, I can’t see many Jazz musicians putting skulls etc. on their archtops!

The idea behind Strattoos is simple, if you want to customise your guitar but don’t want to spend a whole load of money slap a Strattoos Tattoo on there and immediately stand out from the crowd.

For more info head over to www.strattoos.com

I want to share an amazing invention that I daresay will soon become common-place in the guitar world, Dagmar Guitars has been working with Dr Hans-Peter Loock of Queen’s University in Canada developing a new type of pickup using Fiber Optics. I recently had an email conversation with Dr. Loock where he gave me this great explanation:

The sound of many acoustic instruments (mostly acoustic guitars) is frequently recorded using piezo-electric pickups. Piezos record the vibration of the soundboard of the guitar and convert the vibration amplitude into a voltage. Piezos work quite well, but - as I understand - have some disadvantages: they measure acceleration as well as amplitude and therefore cannot have a completely flat frequency response. They are sometimes susceptible to radio frequency noise (the 60 Hz hum) and it is difficult to use more than a few of these pickups on one instrument.

Instead of piezo electric pickups we use strain sensitive fiber optic cables. Our fibers have a strain sensor, called a “Fiber Bragg Grating” near their end, which reflects light of only one particular wavelength. When the grating is strained a different wavelength is reflected. The FBG is fixed to the guitar body and we send laser light at the “unstrained reflection wavelength” along the fiber and record the intensity of the reflected light. When the guitar body vibrates, the FBG is strained, laser light of the same wavelength is no longer reflected (but is transmitted) and the reflected light intensity is reduced. The photodetector can therefore monitor the amplitude of vibration. We feed its output directly into an audio amplifier for recording and reproduction.

The advantage is that this pickup is still the size and weight of a fiber optic cable (micrograms and dimensions of about 100 micrometers diameter and 2 mm length). In Pete’s [Pete Swanson - Dagmar Guitars] guitar seven pickups were embedded into the wood of the soundplate before varnishing and therefore become a part of the body.  Also the frequency response is flat up to 20 kHz and we have not observed any interference form electromagnetic fields (or room light!). We do have issues with laser intensity noise and with intensity noise form the fiber optic cables though. Our current research project (was funded only last week!) will focus on eliminating these last sources of noise to get as close as possible to the true sound of the instrument.

I realize this is a lot of optics, but in essence the technology is not that different from what is already used in the fiber-optic vibration monitoring of airplane wings, wind turbine blades, generators, buildings and bridges. We focus on musical instruments, but hope that eventually all other applications will also benefit from our research.

We have commissioned a guitar from Dagmar Guitars (luthier: Pete Swanson) that has 7 fiber optic pickups permanently built in. The guitar is called “Vicky” (pictured above).

This all sounds very exciting to me, totally eliminating external, and hopefully with their latest round of funding, internal noise from a pickup will mean a totally true representation of the guitar’s tone which will be very popular with Acoustic and Archtop jazz guitars.

For more info keep an eye on http://www.dagmarcustomguitars.com/ for more info.

Update: khas evets posted a comment asking about how you capture the sound of the string as well as the body with this pickup system. Dr Loock’s has responded to this comment with a little more info:

“The question is an interesting one: of course the fiber optic sensors - just like good piezos - record faithfully the vibration of the guitar body but not necessarily that of the strings. To get more of the sound of the strings one can put either pickup right at the bridge. In fact, Pete’s guitar has two fiber optic pickups on either side of the “floating” bridge, in addition to five more pickups at other places on the body. We also experimented with putting fiber optics on the headstock (works well for solid body guitars!), but decided against that for Pete’s guitar.”

More Seymour Duncan news! When Seymour isn’t busy ripping it up with Yngwie Malmsteen and George Lynch he runs a rather successful little company (ok so it’s not little) making some of the most widely used Guitar Pickups in the business. Seymour Duncan have just announced an extra product to their stunning array called the Triple Shot Mounting Ring which allows you to access three unique tones from a single humbucker, not only that but it is a piece of cake to install and there is even an installation video to help you out on the product page.

This “stealth” pickup switching device allows you to access series, parallel and split wirings with a standard humbucker. And it’s easy to install. Just solder your pickup leads to a small color-coded circuit board. That’s it. Push the two switches towards each other for standard series wiring; away from each other for parallel wiring; and both towards one coil (either one) to shut that coil

The only thing is that these switches do look a bit small and fiddly so it won’t be to everyone’s taste but if you are looking for a simple DIY method of changing your humbucker sounds then look no further.

Seymour Duncan Triple Shot Mounting Ring

When I think of Sanyo I think back to the 80’s when everyone had Walkman’s, Sanyo were a pretty big player in the home entertainment/music sector but I haven’t really heard much about them recently. Well that all changes right now, Sanyo have announced a music accessory for guitarists! The Sanyo Pedal Juice is a Rechargable 9V Power supply for your pedal board which can last for 50 hours of operation, this basically means you only need 1 cordless power supply to replace your AC Supply for noiseless operation and no need for pesky 9v battery replacements. Here is the press release:

SANYO North America Corporation (SANYO), a leader in rechargeable battery technology introduces a new way for musicians to power their effects pedals, multi-effect devices, and mobile recorders. SANYO Pedal Juice, a 9V DC Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery device, will be available from leading national music retailers and distributors throughout the U.S. in late June with a List Price of $199.99.
SANYO has developed Pedal Juice to meet the needs of both professional and entry-level musicians. One Pedal Juice battery can provide up to 50 hours of continuous, stable power for a single analog pedal or up to 20 hours of continuous power to three digital pedals.  Because the eneloop 9V rechargeable lithium-ion battery eliminates the need for AC power, the output voltage is more stable for longer periods of time without the possibility of AC ground looping noise. The battery can be recharged hundreds of times, thereby eliminating the waste and inconvenience of disposable 9V alkaline batteries. With two DC outputs, Pedal Juice can power multiple devices including pedals, multi-effect units, and portable recorders. Pedal Juice provides portable battery power to a single pedal or can be used to power several pedals at the same time. 

“Getting power to effects pedals has never been easier,” says Tom Van Voy, Vice President and General Manager of the Consumer Products Group for SANYO North America. “Pedal Juice will power multiple effects pedals with the simple press of a button, eliminating the need to unplug pedals from traditional power sources,” said Van Voy. “With the portable power Pedal Juice offers, musicians can perform without an AC power outlet.”

SANYO Pedal Juice was developed using feedback from musicians about what they need in portable power devices. Musicians can conveniently power Pedal Juice and connected devices with a flip of the on-off switch. In addition, a 3-stage visible LED power indicator displays the remaining power level with green, orange, and red LED lights for musicians to see at a glance. Pedal Juice is also water and shock resistant to JIS IPX3 compliance level.

SANYO originally debuted new products for the music industry at the Winter NAMM Show in January. With the introduction of Pedal Juice, SANYO continues to support the “eneloop lifestyle” valuing the reusing and recycling of resources. SANYO will continue to develop and offer products suited for musicians, such as its digital sound recorders and additional energy solutions.

For more information about the SANYO Pedal Juice please visit http://us.sanyo.com/pedal-juice