Category Archives: Guitar

The Egmond Project – Update #2

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The next part of the project turned out to be getting everything lined up. After rebuilding the guitar I left it at pitch for a week or two to see if anything moved… it didn’t. Since the last post I have also moved the bridge over a bit to improved the line up of the strings. Unfortunately with the bridge in the right place the bass string started popping out if anyone breathed too loudly so I took the bridge out to cut a much deeper saddle slot for the bass strings.

Note: This post is part of a series: [Update #1] -> [Original post]

Even with these changes it still lacked quite a bit in the playability department. After several hours trying to shave the bridge I concluded that the neck joint really did need the neck to lay back a bit more. The Egmond’s neck joint it rather different from the Fender-style neck joint you might see on electric guitars. Instead of the four big screws it relies on a single bolt to counter the tension of the strings.

The Egmond cantilever neck joint

The Egmond cantilever neck joint

Basically the neck pivots on the plywood at the top of the neck joint, whilst the single bolt goes through the heel of the neck, through the spring and into the body. Adding some shims to the pivot point allows the neck angle to be increases slightly, dropping the strings down a bit and making the guitar more playable.

Neck joint with shims inserted

Neck joint with shims inserted

The shims were made by setting a plane to a fairly brutal setting and running it up and down a piece of beech. Sadly they were not quite thick enough, even when doubled up. The folks over at The Guitar Grounds were very helpful. After they described how the 70s era Fender’s were generally shimmed using whatever was at hand (often business cards). I figured if business cards were good enough to US made Fenders then I could get away with four layers of wooden shims. Actually I have three shims on one side and four on the other so correct the angle slightly.

It’s done the job. The neck is now laid back enough that the little metal wheels on the bridge can adjust the action properly. I’ve been forced to set the action a little higher than I would like because the frets could really do with the attention of a crowning file (which I don’t have). Nevertheless it makes the world of different to its playability.

Electrification will come soon!

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tintdrum – tintamp’s junior stablemate

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For some time now I’ve been playing with constructing my own digital modeller.

By and large I’ve deliberately kept the scope of the project to be a make a practice tool (rather than a studio effect) in order to try an keep things achievable. The ultimate aim is to make a device that you use like an amPlug (or iRig for iPhone) to practice with. More exactly it is a battery operated “thing” that allows you practice without any wires except those joining the guitar to your ears.

I’m working in phases of very limited scope so that I can lose interest in the project whilst still having achieved something and there’s still a long way to go before I can call it a modeller. Nevertheless since Christmas I’ve been able to move from playing with software in the PC to playing with something real.

STM32F4-Discovery running an early version of tintdrum
The above is my recently acquired STM32F4-Discovery board running tintdrum, a fixed function groove machine designed to use like a metronome but with a stronger groove. The idea is that this type of drum machine is a vital component of a digital practice tool so tintamp will definitely have to have one when its finished. However it is actually useful enough to be a separate thing in its own right. Something I can put in a box and call “done”

The board above is running my own drum machine software. You can tell can’t you? Until last week all it was able to do was plug in and it started playing drums via the headphone socket at the bottom… it played a really basic 4/4, kick, snare, kick, snare beat (plus hi-hat)… at exactly 100 beats per minutes… and that’s it.

This week however I’ve been able to extend it to flash an LED on the beat (a vital feature in a practice tool) and also been able to rig up a tap tempo button. This means its starting to feel real. That said I still need to implement controls to change the groove and volume. I’d also like to extend the drum machine code to include humanization to stop is sounding quite so start.

Nevertheless the journey from PC to real hardware has begun. Bon voyage.

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The Egmond Project – Introduction

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After my uncle’s sad, and rather too early, passing away I recently inherited a guitar project. Basically the guitar said something to me from the first photo I saw of it, perhaps because semi-acoustic basses really aren’t very common. It went from a passing whim to a potential project when my dad unearthed a cigar box full of all the guitar hardware that changed the body and neck from being firewood into being a viable project.

So now there is something potentially wonderful in my garage. It just needs a little time spent on it. Everything I’ve got is shown in the picture below, both main bits of guitar together with a cigar case containing all the missing hardware, right down to the strings.

Looking more closely at the box of bits is interesting.

In there are all the bits and bobs that need to be screwed, nailed, wedged and soldered together to bring the guitar back to life: pickups (one of which needs repairing), tail piece, machine heads, circuit components, switches. So far I’ve not thought of anything missing.

I have spent some time trying to work out why the guitar was taken to pieces. Was there something wrong with it? Certainly the bridge overs some clue that I might end up having to do something about the neck.

Those massive grooves really shouldn’t be there. It’s like they were cut to account for a neck that was practically falling off. However I’ve looked very carefully at the joint and I don’t see the problem. When properly tightened it sits at what looks like the right angle and doesn’t want to move much.  I guess I won’t find out until I buy a new bridge and try and bring the strings to tension.

For now I have concluded the guitar was in so many bits because my uncle was planning to refinish it. When someone takes so much of the hardware off it can only really be to get down to the wood! For me that’s terrific news, because it suggests it was playable and will fit back together again!

So there it is… a project. I’m looking forward to it.

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A guitar preamp using biquads and a waveshaper

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Let’s start this with a confession. This post is nothing more than a summary of an idea I picked up from an eight year old paper. I didn’t even go to the trouble of finding the paper myself but instead found it cited in the source code to guitarix. For that reason this should be quite a short post.

Firstly remember that at the moment tintamp is not really a modeller. It will be, but its not there yet. For now its just a fixed function digital signal processing chain that is “good enough” to allow each stage in the chain to be prototyped and developed further. On the plus side being fixed function makes things very easy to describe.

So the first revision attempt at a tintamp preamp consists of three similarly configured amplification stages based on an approximation of a class A 12AX7 amplifier. The heart of the tube stage is a waveshaper based upon the transfer function of a 12AX7. This is surrounded by three biquad filters that model the effects of the capcitors in the circuit being modelled.

All told it looks something like this (click to enlarge):

Please forgive the poor layout above. I rushing to press “Publish” just a little and I’m not very expert at graphviz just yet. Additionally if you want to see the ideas expressed more lucidly the Virtual Air Guitar folks have already done a very good job, take a look at their paper!

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Cabinet simulation using biquad filters

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My last post introduced tintamp and described the target hardware for the project. I’ll now fill that out a little bit with a description of one the building blocks from which I plan to construct the initial signal chain. For now the idea is to fairly simplistic DSP techniques from which I can develop and end-to-end signal chain, including an amplifier, tonestack and cabinet simulation. Once there is a complete signal chain then the hardware components needed to connect the delicate guitar signal to the target hardware can be tested. Likewise when more sophisticated software is written we have a benchmark to compare it to. There’s no point in sophistication just for the sake of it.

Ultimately I think only two blocks are needed to build a complete chain, a biquad filter and a waveshaper. On its own the biquad is sufficient to construct simple tonestacks and cabinet simulations while the waveshaper allows us to trivially model non-linear relationships between input and output voltages. A waveshaper is not insufficient to model a real valve’s behaviour for AC signals although it can be combined with a biquad filter that feeds back from its input to its output to add at least some modelling of dynamic behaviour.

So on that basis I coded up these basic building blocks (including a test suite) and set to work. I should at this point express my gratitude to Robert Bristow-Johnson for his Cookbook formulae for audio EQ biquad filter coefficients, all those filters compressed into such an easy to read document saved me an awful lot of work.

So, lets get back on topic and introduce a basic cabinet filter using only biquad filters. My starting point was a trace of the frequency response of the Condor cabsim from runoffgroove. I had no real reason to pick this cabinet response over any other but I happened to stumble across their graph first.

Based on the above graph picked out five biquad filters:

  • A -16dB partial notch filter at 400Hz to get the deep notch
  • A 6dB high boosting shelf filter at 400Hz to get the roller coaster effect
  • A single high pass filter at 60Hz
  • Two low pass filters each at 4000Hz

As of now I haven’t yet graphed the response of this cabinet simulation (although I have listened to it) and currently all the Q values are untuned and set to 0.7 . Tuning these will have a big effect on the mid range since in particular they change the shape of the curve around the notch.

Having got this far I won’t be using the runoffgroove graph as a reference any more. All further tuning will be by ear and, eventually, I’ll create other speaker models using graphs from real speakers. That said it will be while before I start improving the cabsim. At the moment one working cabsim is sufficient to get the rest of the signal chain in place so the focus has to be somewhere else for a while.

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The Integer Amplifier

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This post is an introduction to tintamp, the integer amplifier. The goal of the tintamp project is to build a free software guitar modeller for low resource computers such as digital music players or modern high performance microcontrollers. The focus on low resource devices defines much of the character of the project from its choice of implementation language to the relatively simplistic, and therefore CPU-friendly, DSP engine. These devices also mandate unusual features such as the no malloc() mode and the use of purely integer arithmetic operations (a.k.a. fixed point) from which the project gets its name.

To provide even more focus and to make it easier to ‘complete’ the project I have picked two platforms to be reference devices. These are the first devices I expect to port tintamp to. Both devices require a little hardware hacking as well as the tintamp software so there will be a substantial element of learning as I go.

Target 1 – Sansa Clip Zip

From a hardware perspective this is a simple mini-project to convert an off-the-shelf digital music player into a headphone practice amplifier. The digital music player in question is the Sanza Clip Zip made by Sandisk.

From the point of view of this project it has good many things going for it. In particular it has audio inputs that can be tapped into by de-soldering either the built in microphone or FM radio chip. It also has a colour display, a 250MHz ARM9 CPU and,crucially, a mature Rockbox port. The Rockbox port means I can concentrate on the signal processing code without having to work very hard getting the rest of the hardware to work. Even better, these devices are really cheap, so much so that I’m seriously contemplating buying a second one to keep and use for its original purpose.

The only problem with the device is the noise floor. The microphone is probably too noisy too use at all and even with the FM radio’s line in things are only 12dB better. Still, when finished this device will be a headphone practice amp so there’s little need for studio quality effects. It just has to be playable.

The most significant technical limitation of this platform is the absence of FPU making this device is the main motivation for (optionally) using fixed point arithmetic.

Target 2 – STM32F4-Discovery

This time around the mini project it to take a demo board based around a very powerful modern micro controller, combine it with a good quality codec chip and build a digital effects pedal.

The discovery board from STMicroelectronics[1] brings most of the pins of ST’s STM32F4 controller and brings them out to header connectors. This includes the I2S (digital audio) in/out needed to interface it to a codec chip. Alternatively the board has built-in audio output together with a USB on-the-go controller that allows a USB audio device to be connected up.

The STM32F4 is based around a 168MHz ARM Cortex M4 which, although restricted to only the Thumb2 instruction set, does have a floating point unit. Here the big restriction is that being a micro controller there is only 192k of RAM. This will have to be very carefully managed. On the other hand what memory there is should be very fast compared to the CPU so no performance will be wasted with cache misses.

[1]
In the interests of full disclosure I should probably mention that I work for STMicroelectronics. However I don’t work in the microcontroller group and I didn’t pick the Discovery board because it was made by ST. I picked it because the board is fast, cheap and has I2S pins. Likewise, however much I ask my manager, I don’t get the board for free; I have to pay for it like anyone else. While disclaiming things I should also add that nothing in this blog comes from my employer. I’m not authorized to speak on their behalf and all opinions expressed here are purely my own.

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My first diddly bow

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This is a picture of my first ever diddly bow. It was constructed from ash and is primarily made using an axe with a little help from a saw and a knife. The axe is even used to drive the tuning wedge. Can you tune your instrument with an axe?

image

I set this up at a recent bush craft training weekend (which was, as ever, an excellent weekend). You can tell I was listening to the training because I identified the tonewood used to make it by the fungus growing on it. This is not a recognised techiniue for identifying a guitars tonewood!

Continue reading →

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Why the scammer wanted to pay by paypal

Posted on by Daniel
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I recently put my very first guitar up for sale on the local free-ads site. The free-ads site in question provides an e-mail the seller box and I received a simple request to find out if the guitar was still for sale:

From: Noreply@trade-it.co.uk
Subject: Epiphone SG Special Electric Guitar
Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:49:32 +0100

Message from bernard.xxxxxxxx90s@gmail.com, sent using "Email
advertiser" form on trade-it site
Ad url: http://www.trade-it.co.uk/musical-guitars-electric/
region-w-uk-bristol-south-west-avon-bristol/
EpiphoneSGSpecialElectricGuitar-14356228.html

Hello there,pls i will like to know if the above listed item is
still available for sale ??? 

God Bless!!!!

The “God Bless” is an unusual sign off and whist I admire the sentiment I did, as a result, make up my mind to read any follow up carefully. However since I sometimes e-mail sellers to ask if things are still for sale I knocked out a quick reply:

To: bernard.xxxxxxxx90s@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Epiphone SG Special Electric Guitar
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 7:40:00 +0100

Yes. He's still for sale. You could come and see him in Bradley
Stoke most evenings.

Thanks.

When the reply came back there was little doubt in my mind that someone was trying to steal my guitar:

From: Bernard XXXXXXXX <bernard.xxxxxxxx90s@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Epiphone SG Special Electric Guitar
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 09:01:30 +0100

Thanks for mailing back,i am an Oceanographer and i am buying
this for Dad, i am at sea right now, I can only pay through PayPal
at the moment as i don't have access to my bank account online,
but i have it attached to my PayPal account, and this is why i
insisted on using PayPal to pay,all i will need is your PayPal
email address to make the payments,and if you don't have a
paypal account yet,its pretty easy to set one up at
www.paypal.co.uk, iwill be expecting your email.I have a pick up
agent that will come for the pick up after payments.I will like
to have communicate and discuss this via Phone but i am 95% Deaf
and i do use hearing piece so that was why i have prefer to
communicate more through Mail ...So kindly get back to asap...i
need to see more photos also and i will like to know the last
asking price.

God Blessed.

I sincerely hope I have not been cruel to this poor deaf oceanographer in concluding this was a scam. What do you think?

However the bit that really puzzled me is how he intended to scam me. I assumed the key to the scam must that I was paid by paypal. On that basis I went off to read the Paypal Terms and Conditions.

I believe the answer is pretty clearly explained in the terms and conditions. However as a party to those terms and conditions I have to be careful “not to mischaracterise or disparage PayPal as a payment method”. On that basis I shall do my best effort to explain what I have learnt but I encourage you to read the terms and conditions above and decide for yourself!

The scam hinges on payment reversals. Payment reversals can arise from disputes between a buyer and seller and of course a dispute can be legitimate or illegitimate. Likewise if a fraudster pays from someone else’s account the dispute is legitimate but the transaction is fraudulent.

Anyhow, in disputes between a buyer and seller then the payment may be reversed leaving the seller liable for the money to paypal and no longer owning the goods.

Paypal do offer a seller protection program that would cause them to become liable for the money instead. The seller protection programme only applies to transactions carried out by a delivery service. To claim it you require proof of posting and for the delivery service to offer a tracking service that can show the parcel was delivered (transactions < £150) or actual signed proof of delivery (transactions > £150).

As you can see Bernard has tried to arrange personal collection by his “agent”. This scheme to avoid a delivery service would have left me without any seller’s protection and probably have cost me my guitar.

That’s why the scammer wanted to pay by paypal! He hoped I had never heard of payment reversals.

My advice?

  1. Paypal is a payment method suitable for remote transactions only.
  2. Always select a delivery service that provides enough information for you to qualify for the seller protection program.
  3. Never use Paypal for a face to face transaction. If you are required, by third party terms and conditions, to accept paypal (I think this might apply if you list both paypal and “collection in person” as options in an eBay auction) then insist on seeing photo ID and recent utility bill during collection.

For me there was a happy ending though. A straight swap with a very agreeable gentleman named Bob means that my Epiphone has morphed into this:

Count the strings…

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