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GM Arts – Music Guitar Science

This site is offered in the hope that readers will better understand electric guitar technology, leading to creative use of your musical tools. Of course, only practice will improve your musical vocabulary and articulation….

GM Arts – Music Guitar Science

“Hello World! I live in Adelaide, South Australia, and my interests are electric guitar, playing live music, writing MIDI sequences, programming in Visual Basic, dabbling in electronics, with a casual interest in popular science. I have some years of experience in these fields, and use these Web pages to share my knowledge freely. ..”

GM Arts - Music Guitar Science

Electric Guitar

Most musical instruments and their amplification systems, such as those used for public address (PA), recording and hi-fi are designed to reproduce sound as accurately as possible. Electric guitar and its amplification is completely different: every item in the guitar signal chain is designed to modify the raw guitar signal in some way.

  • Guitar Amplifiers – valves vs transistors, some overdrive circuit ideas.
  • Guitar Pickups – get the most out of them alone and in combination,
  • MIDI Music – A guide on MIDI messages, circuit for a PC-MIDI interface.

Related Resources –

  • Pickup Winder Web Page
  • Overdrive schematics – partial designs
  • Pickup wiring and switching ideas
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VU Meter Circuits and Projects

Here is a collection of web pages of VU Meter projects that helps a newbie getting into the Electronics DIY Hobby Land.

VU Meter Circuits and Projects

A Hobby now in your School days or College can help you build a strong profession later. It is Edutainment that will make productive use of your spare time. Friends can do it as a group, during holidays. Parents should encourage healthy hobbies, as the children will grow in a positive and creative atmosphere.

Stereo led level meter – This is it. It’s a STEREO LED LEVEL METER. It’s the cheapest and best bar graph display available and best of all, it uses readily available components.

VU-meter by Archy – Then it hit me. A VU meter, big, beautiful, professional! From that moment started my thoughts flowing. Those VU-meter ICs that are sold in every electronics shop?

LM3914 dot-bar display driver – The LM3914 is a monolithic integrated circuit that senses analog voltage levels and drives 10 LEDs, providing a linear analog display.

Knight Rider Display Project – This project started out as a VU meter. I reused parts and pieces to improve the VU meter and give it additional functionality. It is amazing how much time it takes to create a small thing like this.

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Stereo Audio Music Players

40 Watts Hi-Fi Music System

Stereo Music player with Tuner, 1986, LED VU meter and Analog VU meter.

SAN 20

This was done as repairing home electronics was my hobby in school days, I learnt by building Amplifiers based only on transistors from the Old Philips Circuits and Books.

Home Made Circuits

The above one is TDA2020 20 Watts Per Channel, with LED input level meter and moving-coil output meters. It would have a 5 pin din input and RCA speaker output, input for phono, tape, etc. The Speakers had a woofer, tweeter and midrange with passive crossover network.

SAN 20 Speakers

Stereo Adapter for Portable Music Player

Low Cost Stereo Adapter 20 Watts for Portable Music Player 1984, Bass Treble and Presence.

Portable Music Player

This was a TB810 based 10+10 Watts Stereo Amplifier with LM381 or 2 Preamplifier, The portable player docks in a wooden cabinet. There was no IR, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth in those days, so the device would interface with amp thru a stereo ear-phone socket-jack system with a shielded cable. Bass, treble and Presence as per an old phillps audio amp book.