Greetings from the Twin Cities!

Started by bloodbrother, March 21, 2015, 07:11:00 AM

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bloodbrother

Hello everyone!

I joined this forum last November, and I have been loyally following it ever since. This is by far the best resource for people who love electronic stringed instrument gear. There are so many brilliant and creative people interacting on this forum, and I am so appreciative of all the valuable information that everyone provides.

I work as a luthier, product designer, and a musician. I have worked for stringed instrument companies in various design, construction, and management capacities over the last ten years, but most recently I have been doing more freelance design and instrument repair. I also perform as a one man band called Blood Brother, in which I use everything from a completely acoustic rig to an entirely MIDI one, and everything in between.

As a luthier, much of my work has been with banjos, and I have always been interested in new ways to amplify and modify their sound. My experimentation really got started when a customer approached me requesting a quintaphonic pickup and 13 pin jack for his 5 string banjo. I had read about people installing a GK pickup on the banjo head before, but this guy didn't want his banjo to appear to have had much modification.

So, I designed a banjo bridge that looks like a traditional one, but has 5 piezo saddles built in to it. the wires come out through the middle bridge foot and are fed through a small hole in the banjo head. All of that was fine with him, but he didn't want a knob or switches on the banjo. So, I mounted a Cat5 jack to the banjo rim that carries all the string signals and ground to a floor enclosure. The enclosure holds a Graph Tech Hexpander board, with a 13 pin output jack. Instead of using the Graph Tech switches and MIDI volume pot, I connected heavy duty foot switches so that he could change patches and toggle settings with his feet. He uses a VG-99 and he can instantly change into all these old-time tunings and, using the banjo modeling, it actually sounds more like a banjo than a banjo with any currently available pickup made for banjos!

Once all of that was done and working properly, I became obsessed with much of the gear that is discussed here, and I have experimented extensively with various configurations.

My one man band gear that I have built or modified is a topic all by itself, and I will hopefully get a chance to share that here too sometime. For now, I am so happy to be a part of this amazing community, and I look forward to exchanging ideas with all of you!!

Peace,
Blood Brother