Digital tremolo arm...?

[Cosmo57]

I was just hanging about in the park, enjoying the sunshine and listening to some music, when I got to thinking about tremolo arms, Matt's built-in effects, and Digitech Whammy pedals.

 

Now, check this out from Musewiki about the Manson 007 ("Blackie"):

 

Then I realised the modern whammy has a MIDI controller system with it, so I went to a great friend of mine, Ron Joyce, who does all my weird electronic stuff, and said, ‘I want to control that pedal from this guitar’. He said, All you need is a pot. I looked in to pots but realised that rotary pots gave the wrong feel. Eventually we came up with the linear pot from the side of a keyboard, which acts as a MIDI controller pad and goes in to a microprocessor to control the whammy. It just number crunches MIDI numbers -you tell it what you want it to do and it'll do it. It'll control a whammy pedal, it'll control a kaoss pad, it'll turn the lights up and down, it'll turn your heated blanket on, whatever you want in terms of MIDI.

 

I thought... wait. So, judging by what I read there, it would be possible to control a Digitech Whammy via a guitar-mounted rotary pot?

 

Then I thought about those plastic Guitar Hero controller things. They have a whammy bar on them... and since there are no real strings for it to effect, and any input from the arm has to go into a game, there's got to be something electronic in there. And, guess what... it's a rotary pot!

 

So, would it not be possible to mount a Guitar Hero whammy bar to a real guitar, wire the pot on the end of it to the same sort of microprocessor thing Hugh fitted to the linear pot in the 007, and use the whole thing as an external device to control the whammy pedal remotely via a second output jack?

 

In fact, I'm not sure it would even need to be mounted to the guitar. It could be a whole separate unit, basically an expression pedal but far more compact, and with a bar instead of a pedal. It could be a simple, small unit that you could clamp to the guitar.

 

Now, of course, I espouse the virtues of a real trem. I have one on the Strat upstairs, and use it a lot. But this idea just came into my head, and it would be nice to experiment with (if I actually had a Digitech Whammy), just to see if it's possible.

 

Thoughts?

[tomrulez]

One question....why? Why not use the whammy with your foot as it's designed to be and thats how it works best.

[Cosmo57]

One question....why? Why not use the whammy with your foot as it's designed to be and thats how it works best.

 

Now, of course, I espouse the virtues of a real trem. I have one on the Strat upstairs, and use it a lot. But this idea just came into my head, and it would be nice to experiment with (if I actually had a Digitech Whammy), just to see if it's possible.

 

[tomrulez]

Well it's possible but still....WHY, also a GH whammy bar would look shit mounted on a real guitar.

[Don'tPostThePear]

One question....why? Why not use the whammy with your foot as it's designed to be and thats how it works best.

 

Yo dawg, i herd you like whammies, so we put a whammy controller on your guitar so you can whammy while you whammy.

[Neil.]

tbh, if i was going to do any sort of wierd touch whammy stuff, i'd either go for the XY pad, or the midi strip. Other than that, something like what's on blackie, with the rf antenna could be cool.

 

I remember coming across a site before (i'll try find it if you like) that had a tonne of interesting midi controllers. Things like optical ones, pressure plates, even wind-sensitive ones. They were expensive enough though. I think it was ~$300 for the basic controller.

[haze015]

There all sorts of ways to control MIDI data, so it's possible in theory. But the GH controller doesn't send MIDI data, you'd have to connect to a laptop to convert the info into MIDI, then send that to the Whammy.

[Neil.]

or make a little arduino part.

[Cosmo57]

Well it's possible but still....WHY, also a GH whammy bar would look shit mounted on a real guitar.

 

It's just an idea. That's all. The Manson 007 has a strip to control the Whammy, and I thought it would be a cool idea to do the same thing, but with a bar for a more familiar feel.

 

Plus, who said it had to be the actual bar from a controller? You could probably just get a real bar, and a pot, and link them up in the same way. It could be pretty easily disguised on the outside.

 

There all sorts of ways to control MIDI data, so it's possible in theory. But the GH controller doesn't send MIDI data, you'd have to connect to a laptop to convert the info into MIDI, then send that to the Whammy.

 

That's true. But surely there's some way to convert potentiometer input into MIDI data...?

 

I'm not seriously considering doing this right now... it's just an idea I had. It would be cool though. A trem that never detunes, without any locking nuts and stuff... plus if you mounted it to a hardtail guitar, you would get the stability of a hardtail bridge along with it. I think it's a pretty neat idea, despite the nay-sayers

[haze015]

That's true. But surely there's some way to convert potentiometer input into MIDI data...?

 

I'm not seriously considering doing this right now... it's just an idea I had. It would be cool though. A trem that never detunes, without any locking nuts and stuff... plus if you mounted it to a hardtail guitar, you would get the stability of a hardtail bridge along with it. I think it's a pretty neat idea, despite the nay-sayers

 

A Whammy is nothing like a vibrato, like a floating one you can bend up and down. Also if you're going out of tune often, you need to look at the setup

[Cosmo57]

A Whammy is nothing like a vibrato, like a floating one you can bend up and down. Also if you're going out of tune often, you need to look at the setup

 

Yeah, I know... and no, I'm not really going out of tune a lot on the Strat... it's actually really good. I just thought it would be cool to control a Whammy via a bar, but apparently nobody else does

[haze015]

Yeah, I know... and no, I'm not really going out of tune a lot on the Strat... it's actually really good. I just thought it would be cool to control a Whammy via a bar, but apparently nobody else does

 

You'd need a button to hold where it was last set as well as needing to run the signal through the Whammy at all times (The bypass is bad enough, when it's on it destroys the signal). So it's just unnecessarily complicated for no real benefit to be honest.

 

It's not smart to start looking at Matt's guitars and thinking they are great ideas, unless you're playing on those size stages and trying to sing/play guitar/piss about with effects/run around like you've got ADHD when you're on them.

[Cosmo57]

You'd need a button to hold where it was last set as well as needing to run the signal through the Whammy at all times (The bypass is bad enough, when it's on it destroys the signal). So it's just unnecessarily complicated for no real benefit to be honest.

 

It's not smart to start looking at Matt's guitars and thinking they are great ideas, unless you're playing on those size stages and trying to sing/play guitar/piss about with effects/run around like you've got ADHD when you're on them.

 

Suppose.

 

I'd have thought the pitch would return up if you released the bar, since it would be spring loaded. But meh.

 

As I said, I wasn't seriously considering this, just asking if it's possible/worth it... got my answer. Cheers.