greggery peccary wrote:
i have a big ugly instrument idea that is unfolding into reality. it's
a 2' by 5' piece of stainless. bass hardware holds fat piano strings on
one side and on the other i want to weld stays to support a large
spring which i can hit with a metal rod. i will tune the strings to
resonate a certain chord when the spring is struck. i have some old
dimarzio bass pickups for under the strings but im wondering if a
contact mic would work on the sheet metal, or other ideas?
*pangmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm*
-alan

Sounds great. The approach I've taken with similar hunks of suspended
metals is to make contact pickups. Go to a Radio Shack & buy several of
the low voltage piezo disk-shaped buzzer units. They used to be 79
cents, might run you a couple bucks now. Disassemble the plastic
housing & you have a copper disk with a couple leads soldered to it.
Replace those leads with the end of some single conductor audio cable,
going to a 1/4" connector on the other end. Put a daub of silicone
sealer over the solder connections for a strain relief & you now have a
fairly high output contact transducer. Tape it to your metal
instrument, plug it in & you get sound into an amplifier. It will be
bright & a bit brittle, but there's a lot of signal available to EQ to
your hearts delight.
Also check into www.oddmusic.com for other new instrument ideas.

Scott Fraser