Building a (literal) metal guitar. All suggestions welcome

[SuperFreq]

 

Hi gang, this is my latest project. A 100% metal (aluminum) guitar based on a Warlock single pickup design.

I've never built a guitar by myself before, although with the help of experienced luthiers I've co-designed 2 aluminum gtrs, having them do the labor. This is my first solo build.

I have the body and the neck as pictured. That's all I've got so far, meaning everything from electronics to tuners to strings is fair game. If the plan is to stay close to a BC Rich Warlock single-pickup design, what do you suggest for hardware? Spare no expense at this point; the body & neck cost me a pretty penny so why not go for the top of the line.

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 04:23 PM by SuperFreq

[Chaps]

Maybe something that allows you to use the guitar as a MIDI controller,  like the Roland GK-3 Divided Pickup?

[SuperFreq]

29 minutes ago, Chaps said:

Maybe something that allows you to use the guitar as a MIDI controller,  like the Roland GK-3 Divided Pickup?

BRILLIANT.

That would be so effing sweet, especially since I happen to have an earlier model GK-2a as well as a GR-1 synth module collecting dust!

From what I recall, the GK installs at the bridge, leaving the regular pickup cavity available, so I can have the best of both worlds. But using it as a MIDI guitar would definitely go with its space age looks!

[Amberwolf]

There is also a software solution to that by Jam Origin. 

 

  It works pretty well for my beater yamaha acoustic with a magnetic pickup wedged in the soundhole, and my crappy firstact electric.   The bass version works ok with my Ibanez 6-string bass.  (keep in mind I don't really play guitar, so theres' probably things it odesn't do that I don't know about).   

 

[SuperFreq]

15 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

There is also a software solution to that by Jam Origin. 

 

  It works pretty well for my beater yamaha acoustic with a magnetic pickup wedged in the soundhole, and my crappy firstact electric.   The bass version works ok with my Ibanez 6-string bass.  (keep in mind I don't really play guitar, so theres' probably things it odesn't do that I don't know about).   

 

That's insanely impressive. I wish he demoed chords and polyphonic riffs because that's where I bet there might be some trouble with the software. But for solo stuff, he proved it can track as fast as Keith Emerson at least.

One unique feature of the Roland hex pickup & guitar synth combo is each string is goes to a separate voice, so you can adjust the fx or even assign each string to a different sound. For example bass guitar to the low strings and synth to the upper. I recall one preset that's hours of fun: a full drum kit!

But I recall installing the hex pickup can be a pain. I'd just as soon use a software converter for most uses. Thanks for the tip!

[mettelus]

Most hardware (tuners, nut, bridge/tremolo) will mirror over from a wood design, but as mentioned above, I would put some forethought into the electronics. I would suspect the sustain on that would be well above average and also brighter due to harmonics. 

With one pickup, a Seymour Duncan Triple Shot will allow you to series/parallel/single coil each side without any guitar modification (switches are on the ring). With the sustain possibilities, building in a sustainer (where a neck pup would be) is another option, but that requires a power source and possible modification, so might be on the overzealous end.

The Triple Shot also has the advantage you can swap the entire assembly out for another pup, but leave enough wire to work with inside the pup cavity. If you really want to get carried away, you can use contacts in the cavity and magnets on the guitar/steel spacer on the ring to pop the whole thing in and out "at will."

[Amberwolf]

9 hours ago, SuperFreq said:

That's insanely impressive. I wish he demoed chords and polyphonic riffs because that's where I bet there might be some trouble with the software. But for solo stuff, he proved it can track as fast as Keith Emerson at least.

There is a demo version you can try out; I think it just uses periodic silences? 

 

I can't play normally (i have to lay the guitar on my lap and hold the strings down from above, etc), so I can only tell you that for my limited uses it works better than the Yamaha G10** I lost in the housefire back in 2013***

JO's MG program would probably work even better if I had separate pickups for each string on separate audio channels.  You can acutally run multiple instances of MG, as long as your interface supports multiple programs accessing it.  You can also use it to just drive a midi port instead of making nay sound itself; i use it to drive loopmidi virtual midi cable to send the data into sonar, unfortunately i can't send the audio anywhere withotu a physical cable because it only has one audio choice that does both in and out.  i would like to use a virtual audio cable as the output to send into sonar.   (yes, you can use it as a vst inside your daw, but i prefer to keep it outside). 

 

BTW, you could make it standalone and portqable by using a tiny box pc and audio interface and midi interface, then just use that as a hardware box already presetup to run the instances and use some default preset you've created (or use something like autohotkey to open each instance then open the preset or whatever that tells eadch one to do one string's worth of stuff if you want them different from each ohter.   Otherwise just use six instances to have it comletely independent and have it output the midi to whatever you want it on.  i'd stick each strin ong a separate channel to keep it easier to process all the midi data as separate entities.

 

   (i'd try this myself just to see what it does, but i don't have a hex ickup and haven't had the time / etc to rewire my regulr pickup into separte ones). 

 

 

 

9 hours ago, SuperFreq said:

One unique feature of the Roland hex pickup & guitar synth combo is each string is goes to a separate voice, so you can adjust the fx or even assign each string to a different sound. For example bass guitar to the low strings and synth to the upper. I recall one preset that's hours of fun: a full drum kit!

I've used JOMG to play all sorts of instrumens and sounds, including percussion.    

 

 

 

 

 

***(I actually still have the main box, but the guitar part was melted beyond recognition in it's case--the main box has damaged knobs, but it still turns on and it probably still works fine if I only had the guitar part). 

 

**(the worst part about the G10 was that every string was the same, so the guitar could not be used by me without headphones--otherwise I would hear the strings twang out of tune with whatever it was I was trying to do, and screw it up.   I don't like using headphones all the time, and prefer to be able to hear the "whole thing" in the space I'm in, wherever that's possible, as everything affects what I end up creating, and I usually want that to happen).