I'm fascinated by acoustic properties. If it makes a sound, I'm interested. So when the news came across my Facebook timeline that an inventor made a guitar amp that increases sound levels of an electric guitar by 12 decibels...without using electricity, I went crazy!
Canadian company, DelSonix has just introduced a "speaker," known as the SD28, that is made of a hollow wooden pickup with a bottom-resonating cavity. The contraption is clamped to the guitar's headstock. It picks up the instrument's vibrations, while a resonator projects the sound.
In a way, it's similar to a Victrola record machine, taking acoustic vibrations and amplifying them through a wooden tube and out into a cone.
DelSonix says the invention works with all electric guitars and basses (hmm...cigar box guitars?) and can increase loudness from 6 to 12dB, depending on guitar design. By rotating the resonator, guitarists can project the sound in specific directions, while the entire device rolls up into a 1-inch tube for storage.
The SD28 is available now. It costs $34 CAN ($24 U.S.) and ships to Canada, U.S., Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Replies
Hi, all interesting. Is it the wall or door you hear resonating, or the fact that due to extra mass added to the peghead/neck the strings at the box end are driving the soundboard more efficiently, so more volume?
Just athought. Taff
Proud to see that here on the ultimate do it yourself instrument forum everyone's picking this as a doable DIY project. $35 for a plastic cone, a stick and a clamp. With flaws. The stick wastes energy. The clamp itself will also take energy away from the cone. But I guess neither can be helped. No stick and a much smaller clamp would be improvements.
Turtlehead, you might get move volume with a single piece of wood instead of a box. And a much smaller clamp. No paper and shave end ends down as thin as possible. Omni directional so it wont be aimed right at you.
I get more volume out of mine by putting the headstock against a wall. : )
Yep Cause, could do much better than just the box I'm sure - I use an old hollow core door for a work table sometimes and get a big sound when I'm stringing up a new guitar. Hopefully Oily or somebody else will incorporate this into a new build and get some good results. Happy experimenting y'all!
Also check out the Stroh violin for a similar sort of thing.
This reminds me of a story Les Paul told about when He was a kid. He used a old Victrola needle and embedded it in his acoustic guitar bridge, then attached wires to the Victrola horn. He got the idea from the windows rattling when a train rolled down the tracks near his home.
The quick and dirty cigar box version - got a couple dB out of it ;)
What you've done is clamp essentially a Helmholtz resonator to your headstock. Shaping the dimensions of the box will result in specific frequency range reinforcement. Been doing a lot of reading on folded horns, Voight pipes, and transmission line speaker enclosures for passive sound reinforcement.
;) Oily. Interested to see and hear what you come up with.
Piece o' cake. I can build all of these tomorrow afternoon for under $10.
But wait 'til you hear what can be done with a radical CBG design I came up with while building three variations on an electric guitar amplifier plywood passive DIY Sound Enhancer (of which I need to post pics and video files).
Muahahahahaha...
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