Project Pimp-o-caster

V8 · 2015-11-24T08:47:48+00:00

I got this from Opeth about a year ago , t'was a case of mutual G.A.S. He wanted a jazzbox and I wanted something with a hardtail. So I become the skeptical...

Project Pimp-o-caster

V8

I bumped into lapdawg at the GJ yesterday and he gave me a much needed boost of enthusiasm. Always a pleasure to chat to him, what a inspiration. Especially since he keeps on building right handed guitars for us to enjoy...which as a lefty he never really gets to play :?

So I shuffled off home and got stuck into my little project with a vengeance!

Really happy with the install of the midi bits inside the cavity. A bit of double sided tape, some cable ties & one tiny screw to keep the hexpander in place if the tape dries out and - voila - worked out better than I had hoped. I had to route everything as neat as I could, as there really isn't much spare real estate in the cavity once the pickguard is in installed.

Annnnddd as a teaser shot, I tested fitted the pickguard to make sure that it would actually fit...and it does - just - whew! The only clue that this is a midi beastie is the black 13 pin jack on the bottom right of the guit - nice!

Hmm, my lack of class/style/taste is now revealed....damn, I can't help myself....I reckon the pimped pickguard looks good with the 'buckers in place 8)

morph

Real pimpy, all you need is a broad white hat with a large feather

Really keen on seeing this operate

Wizard

Looking fabulous.
A plan coming together.
?

V8

Sums up this noobie build perfectly...Despite that, it is bolted together and works!

There was a bit of a polaroid moment when I plugged in the midi and nothing triggered. 10mins of troubleshooting and I discovered the jack had mysteriously disconnected itself - whew!

Tracking IS better than the previous guitar it was installed in and there's a lot less false triggers. I still have a bit of setup on the guitar to do, including a LOT of tweaking/setting up the midi (GI-20) & software (Ableton).

We'll see how much I can improve it, though I do accept that it'll never play with the accuracy of a Axon setup with RMC pickups - for the money it's a shedload of fun, had about 3hrs of piano/synth fun yesterday ?

Aside from setup & tweaking, I do want to do a few more things to it :

Get some chrome strat style knobs - the white ones just don't look right
Change the vol pot to a linear style one w/a treble bleed mod - I didn't realize that this one was a audio taper and is basically unusable w/o the treble bleed mod
I strung up with a set of elixir's I had lying around - and the trebles feel crappy on this guitar. I hear that flatwounds may track better so I'll slap a set of those on next re-string

V8

Greg Perkins wrote: Real pimpy, all you need is a broad white hat with a large feather

Really keen on seeing this operate

Hehe, I think a white heat and feather are a fine idea...then again I would :-[

Coolio, I'll pm you when it's setup nicely!

Wizard wrote: Looking fabulous.
A plan coming together.
?

Thank you Wizard...Without your workshop and skills, it probably would never have happened...You are a champ!

V8

I was thinking, a build like this is nothing without a soundclip. I stuck a few bits together in Ableton and presto - a (imo) sweet sounding piano!

morph

Sounds good, are you playing multiple notes or are you doubling up the captured midi notes and moving them up or down to create the multi-note sound?

V8

Greg Perkins wrote: Sounds good, are you playing multiple notes or are you doubling up the captured midi notes and moving them up or down to create the multi-note sound?

Thanks Greg - I'm cheating a bit with a chord plugin outta Ableton. Here's a pic of the chord plugin (Grandiosa) and the instrument (Grand Piano)

There is just no way I could play chords that fast or cleanly. But that's why I dig Ableton, soo many ways to skin the cat.

The Grandiosa chord plugin is set to :

One octave down
Two octaves down (slightly adjusted)
One octave up (slightly adjusted)
7 semitones up (a 5th on the guitar)

The way I think about it - playing power chords (root + 5th + octave up) with the right hand on the piano and playing a bass line with the left hand (2octave down + 1 octave down from the root).

All I played was a little blues lick starting on the the 12th fret low E string and the software does all the hard work.

The piano w/o chord plugin(s) does work nicely for playing guitar chords though - especially if you pick the notes or pluck doublestops.

I'm finding out that the sampled instruments all have a certain attack, which lends itself to differing styles of playing. Like using a ambient pad behind slow strums sounds great as a rhythm track, loop that, then layer some guitar leads on top.

morph

I am seriously keen on doing something like this to my Yamaha RGX312 SSH. It has a Floyd Rose bridge. The poor old girl has taken a back seat to the Tokai and Strat.

A new set of pickups and this type of conversion could really revitalise her

V8

Greg Perkins wrote: I am seriously keen on doing something like this to my Yamaha RGX312 SSH. It has a Floyd Rose bridge. The poor old girl has taken a back seat to the Tokai and Strat.

A new set of pickups and this type of conversion could really revitalise her

Hmm, one could - but after a few discussions with Alan (Ratcliffe - the graphtech/midi maestro), He recommended a telecaster with a thick body and fat neck - So, I went looking for suitable guitar. The Cort doesn't have a heavy/thick body, but is very resonant (hardtail + chunky neck, I guess) and holds a tuning well. And it was cheap - so I didn't mind if the experiment was a debacle.

Not that a install can't be done with trems, I know he did a lovely install in a high end Cort strat copy (w/trem). But, then again, he knows what he is doing - people send their guitars from all over the world for him to work on. And there are plenty of midi equipped guitars with trems (Roland ready fenders, Ibanez's with factory installed systems, the Line6 variax can even be converted).

For the yammie, I'd be tempted to find a bolt-on GK-3 pup rather than install graphtechs/piezo pups. At least that way you won't be stuck with a very specific part that works only on your trem if the results are less than pleasing?

You could swop out the trem for a hardtail, faaarrrr too much like hard work for me ?

If you do a pup upgrade/swop - have alook at the super switches (24 lug 5way selectors), they can really open up a world of fun options - wiring wise.

morph

I see a much more complicated exercise. I actually never use trems, I have hardtailed the Strat, and the Yammie could be easily hardtailed, just never bothered. The Strat simply would not stay in tune, a slight bump and it would be all out. The Floyd Rose is more stable, but I have never had the trem arm installed.

I can understand the wide neck, pretty much what I was looking for on my finger picking box, wide space for them fingers, even though my hands are small. Argh, itch, no scratching. ???

V8

Greg Perkins wrote: The Strat simply would not stay in tune, a slight bump and it would be all out. The Floyd Rose is more stable, but I have never had the trem arm installed.

There's a trick to the setup on a strat trem to be a lot more stable - but I never mastered it. I stuck a tremel-no on and usually keep it fastened tight. Besides, we had a listening test a while back and everyone agreed, hardtail'ed strats *seem* to sound a touch meatier and sustain better.

I did have a moment when I was considered butchering my MIJ for the midi install...fortunately sanity prevailed. I went through 3 guitars before I found one that I thought would suit - even wondered about using one of Wizard's tele bodies, but a neck for it was pricier than the Cort.

Greg Perkins wrote: Argh, itch, no scratching. ???

Haha, I had 18mths of staring at the midi parts before I could get them into something to play. Had the Cort for about a year before I thought it would do (and I'd not find anything better/cheaper). I'm thinking you now had a *perfectly* valid excuse to shop around for a suitable midi guitar... 8)

The neck isn't at all wide, but chunky - which I'm not mad about - except it was one redeeming feature...it's a-symmetrical (fat on the bass side, thinner on the treble side). Which I can live with, felt a bit odd at first, but I got used to it. Does promote more classical guitar style fretting hand (arched fingers), which helps not triggering adjoining strings unintentionally.

V8

It's been a while - for the sake of any other [s]poor sucker[/s] brave soul who may attempt to do something similar, allow me to update... So, I parked this project in December because I was still getting too many false triggers - my initial opinion that it was more stable than the previous install was dashed when I played it for a few days. Seemed like all the previous issues re-surfaced - loads of false triggers, impossible to get a clean take of anything. Fast forward six months...the other day a old Roland VG-8 came into the Gear Junkie and was a fine reason to pull out the pimpocaster and try again. The VG-8 is a interesting pedal...from what I understand it isn't a midi to pitch converter like my GI-20, it's a piezo modeling unit. Here's the important bit for anyone who may try this kinda build (and where I suffered a error of logic) : Just because one isn't using the piezo preamp (in my case just the hexpander) does not mean you can't test the piezo output...And when I was plugged into the VG-8 I noticed two things : 1. The B string wasn't triggering consistently & 2. There was a immense amount of crackle when the output jack on the guitar - just a like a dirty 1/4in jack. Makes sense...these are very 2ndhand parts! Grabbed a can of contact cleaner and sprayed the &%*& out of all connections & after a quick clean plugged back into the VG-8. Voila...major improvement. Or so I thought when I started re-assembly with the analog (pickups) parts...I tried to be careful, I tried...really! (Yup, you guessed it...I wasn't :-[) So all re-assembled and -boom- false triggering issues again. Worse than before! I heard that the graphtech ghost bits are fairly fragile, particularly the tiny wires running out the saddles to the hexpander board. Seems like I tore a few wires out of the connectors...[b]DOH![/b] Them wires are TINY and the connectors even more so (see pic, pencil point for scale)...After a few minutes of despair, I pulled out a soldering iron and put my brave pants on. After a good few attempts I fixed one and found two more that were broken. Yay. So if you are having false triggers/hanging notes etc... 1. Clean everything out with electrical contact cleaner (not Q20!) 2. Are the saddle connectors connected the 'right way' on the hexpander board (It apparently makes a difference) 3. Is the connection (from saddle to pins on hexpander) free from breaks? Basically if both wires are not making a connection to the board, you'll have issues. Good news is that it seems to have worked - false triggering issues are far less - now maybe I could actually record something.

Wizard

I have witnessed this beast mimic a piano so well that it attracted the sarcastic comment from an observer:
"why don't you just play a piano?"

V8

Wizard wrote: I have witnessed this beast mimic a piano so well that it attracted the sarcastic comment from an observer:
"why don't you just play a piano?"

Heh, I remember that. At least the commentator could play piano! But not the strings I added to accompany the piano or the choir I added after that. ?

Stoffeltoo

Well done! Mission accomplished and I am officially jealous!

Norman86

Saw the video on gear junkies fb page.. very nice sounding! where were you though?

V8

Norman86 wrote: Saw the video on gear junkies fb page.. very nice sounding! where were you though?

Hiding behind the camera driving the laptop ?

A little update on this stalled project...after I stuck the flatwounds on I had another rash of issues with the tracking - so I parked it again before I stuck it on a braai.

Fast forward a few months, I was jamming with the junkies and someone pulled out a roland soundcanvas and ran a electric drumkit through it - which worked just fine, no latency issues. So I thought that was a good test for pimpocaster, to take the laptop out of the equation.

So, pimpocaster -> GI-20 -> soundcanvas -> amp.

And...guess what. The D,G,B,E strings track damn near perfectly! The A string is good, and low E string is ok-ish, though there is a touch of string rattle on the A&E strings from the new strings (D'Addario EXP's) that doesn't help - also, I recall that this kinda midi system doesn't track as well in the lower registers, so it isn't unexpected.

I feel that could actually trust this to perform live now - a hardware module seems to be noticeably more usable/reliable for live use than the laptop/software instruments for this setup.

Pretty much as everyone told me.... :-[

peterleroux

Meron Rigas wrote: ...The A string is good, and low E string is ok-ish, though there is a touch of string rattle on the A&E strings from the new strings (D'Addario EXP's) that doesn't help - also, I recall that this kinda midi system doesn't track as well in the lower registers, so it isn't unexpected....

Do you ever use the magnetic pickups when you paly or is it only being used for MIDI? If you're just dping midi with it, you could always tune the E and A higher (to a range where they track well) and get the module to transpose them down to play in tune- with early MIDI basses this was a trick a lot of players used- tune up an octave and transpose down to get reliable tracking

V8

peterleroux wrote:
Meron Rigas wrote: ...The A string is good, and low E string is ok-ish, though there is a touch of string rattle on the A&E strings from the new strings (D'Addario EXP's) that doesn't help - also, I recall that this kinda midi system doesn't track as well in the lower registers, so it isn't unexpected....

Do you ever use the magnetic pickups when you paly or is it only being used for MIDI? If you're just dping midi with it, you could always tune the E and A higher (to a range where they track well) and get the module to transpose them down to play in tune- with early MIDI basses this was a trick a lot of players used- tune up an octave and transpose down to get reliable tracking

Hadn't considered that - it's a another good idea - thanks Peter!

I intended to use the mag pups - my original idea was to have everything running through the interface for software instruments/fx in the daw. This was to be a a shreddy/rock guitar that was a bit more versatile than your typical ibby shredder. Part of the re-stringing was that the flats sounded terrible and I just didn't want to play it at all.

I'm not sure I'd like the feeling of very taut strings (or slimmer strings tuned up a octave). It would work, I've messed with individual string splits - something very easy to setup in the daw. I've entertained the suggestion of turning it into a pure midi machine, but -imho- that would be a waste of a great neck?

My nuclear option is to ditch the midi thing and swop out the hexpander for the acousticphonic pre - for the piezo output only - which one can model a bit more than the mag output. (I've tested the piezo output with a ancient roland VG-8 and that worked really well.)