Get Started Building Your Own Instrument

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Odd, Unusual, and Downright Weird Instrument Links

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Get the Best Sound From Your Room

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Look to the Past For New Sounds

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DIY Musical Mayhem

For those with a DIY bent, Instructables.com has a group devoted to audio projects. While there are many projects related to iPod speakers, there are some projects more related to music production. Take the Looper for instance. Many a time when I’m diddling on the guitar I come up with a lick I’d like to expand upon. It’s a bit of work getting set up to record, then edit on my computer just to loop a lick so I can jam over it. I don’t want to break the mood, I’d rather just stomp on a button to punch in and out then continue on vamping. Check out the cool Bass stick too. Making your own instrument is an awesome way to bring fresh creativity to your music as you try to find a place for it in the songs you compose.

 

Get Your own Edison-Style Phonograph

The fine people at Maker Shed, the storefront for Make magazine, have on offer an Edison-Style Phonograph. All I can say is that this is damn cool. What I would do with it is anyone’s guess. I’m sure it would be great for getting that lo-hi effect into recordings. It also would make a great party accessory. Make silly recordings of your drunk friends with the cups they were drinking from.

 

Build Your Own Instrument

For all those interested in building your own instrument visit Harp Kit. They have all sorts of kits and plans available for a myriad of traditional instruments. Harps, dulcimers, banjos, even a Hurdy Gurdy! I wouldn’t mind picking up a guitar kit so that I could build a fretless guitar to experiment with.

http://www.harpkit.com

 

How to Start Your Own Boutique Pedal Business

Me wanty. dano at beavis audio research has released the Beavis Board. This makes prototyping guitar effects so much easier. I’ve played around with a couple of breadboards, building fuzz circuits here and there, but was always disappointed by having jacks, 9 volts, and switches hanging off umbilicals. It became too much of a bother to get set up, and was certainly something I’d want to be working with for any amount of time. Unless you want to commit to a protoboard, projects look like a handful of rainbow spaghetti. With the Beavis Board, I can see hours of endless fun tweaking pots, and swapping caps without worrying about constantly dislodging dangling devices.

There are so many DIY stompbox sites out there, I’m amazed that this hasn’t been done before. There is an opensource DSP effect prototyper called Coyote-1 which is offered by Howler Audio though I don’t see any actual pictures of the unit anywhere on the site. If anyone has bought one, let me know they exist.

The beavis board is designed to give you a platform for learning and building. If you can follow along with simple instructions, you can start building and modding a classic and new stompbox circuits.

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