How to make a homemade guitar: Hive76 Music Hack Night

You can only spend so much time at Hive76 before succumbing to the itch to get your hands dirty.

Thursday’s Music Hack Night gave the technically curious the perfect opportunity to dive in and play around with the synthesizers and homemade string instruments lying around the Spring Garden hackerspace.

One axe that caught our interest was a cigar-box guitar Dan Provenzano equipped with an amp hookup, so that it plays like a real electric guitar.

You can electrify your own homemade guitar in a few easy steps, Provenzano said.

1. First take a Piezo disc (SKU #1956784) and solder its red and black wires to the signal nodes of an output jack.
2. Then use super glue to affix the disc inside the body of the guitar. The folks over at Hive76 recommend placing the disc directly beneath the bridge to pick-up a full sound.

Just plug the amp cable into the jack, and you’re ready to shred.

{3) Video of Dan playing it}

We may be able to wrap our heads around how to make a cigar box guitar, but most gadgets at the Hive are a little out of league. Namely, this 8 mm projector tremolo pedal, which uses projector light to fade sound in and out, taking your traditional tremolo and adding some Rube Goldberg flair.

“The light shines on the receiver, which controls a circuit that looks like a safe. When the light is on, it lets sound through. When the light is off, the stereo acts to dim the sound,” says Provenzano.

However, there are easier ways.

“You could just buy a tremolo,” he says.