Tatsumi's minimal guitar

Saw yesterday in the gallery -able a noise concert by Tatsumi Ryusui and Kyota Koyama - and here are a few pictures of Tatsumi's home made guitar, plus some of the effects and other sound generators he uses.

Doppelcaster project | stage 6.2

Melobaritone project 3

Melobaritone project: gear

I had the opportunity to acquire this  B-stock Steinberger-like tremolo that will fit perfectely to the Melobaritone project - yes it is now a concrete project, I decided to go for it (have to find a better name though, this is not a Melobar copy anymore)! 

I've been thinking about the aluminium neck (with some help from the  Aluminium T-beam Guitar blog) and consider a.o. a tubular neck - since a fretboard is unnecessary -, a little bit like on a Gittler guitar.

Doppelcaster project | stage 6.1

Doppelcaster project | stage 5

more sketches

Doppelcaster project | stage 4

more sketches

Melobaritone project 2

I started to work on the Doppelcaster but my brain is still busy with the Melobaritone idea... I did put some more thinking on it, and updated the project (I want a new instrument, not just a Melobar copy).

First I would do it with an aluminium neck - there's no need to build something as complicated as a regular wooden neck with a truss rod, and I've always been interested in alu neck, so building an alternative guitar is a good opportunity to try it. Also I would put a Floyd Rose trem (with an headless system) - I used one for the first time last month and really enjoyed it.

One would object that a trem on a slide guitar is superfluous, this is true if you play old school blues, but for me it's more like a two-in-one instrument - for a noise maker such as I am, the sound of extremely distended strings is very interesting, and since I wouldn't purchase a guitar just for its Floyd Rose, I'll take this occasion.

I could easily put in this project all the gear I bought for the neckless guitar - it's been on stand-by for months now - and make it my next project after the doubleneck one...

Z. Cat auto-wah pedal

Got myself a Z. Cat auto-wah pedal - I've noticed this brand of hand-made pedals from Latvia a while ago, and decided to try this one - and I'm not disappointed. I still have to play it on a tube amp but so far it has a beautiful sound with overdrive - I will have to find the right settings for clean sound but I don't use this so much anyway...

So I keep feeding noise music with psychedelic vintage analog effects and I'm quite happy with it!