Grind, Spin and Oscillate

When I'm at the office, my cell phone is set on vibrate. That ensures that every time a call comes in, the quiet of the office is disturbed--the cell phone starts rattling around the desk and generally startles the crap out of me.

Such is the stuff of inspiration. The other day I got a call and the cell-phone sat there buzzing around on my desk like Ann Coulter at the Third Annual Hate and Bigotry Conference. And a spark set off in my mind--would it be fun to use one of those vibrating motors as a sort of electro-mechanical E-Bow kind of thing?

Here's a video of the first experiments.
 

The idea for this contraption is incredibly simple and easy to build: hook up a vibrating motor to a battery pack and then get medieval on your strings and pickups.

I built mine with a project box to plug into so I could try different batteries and motors just by plugging and unplugging:

You'll also want to hack together some type of handle to get a hold of the little bugger as it vibrates around. I used a plastic strandoff with double-sided tape and zip tie:

Motor Sources

I wouldn't recommend attempting to replicate the destructive mayhem shown in my video, because there is a much easier way to get vibrating motors.

Motor	Description	Source
	Super Pager Motor	$1.19 at Electronic GoldMine
	Monster 12 volt motor. This one should be good for breaking strings and wearing any finish off any guitar.	$1.49 at Electronic GoldMine
	Nakimi Micro Pager Motor	$1.47 at Electronic GoldMine
	Playstation 2 Dual Shock Motor	Rip it out of an old PS2 controller
	Various commercial motors	From Jameco

The Gizmo

Astute reader Mark noted that the "Gizmo" as invented by a couple of wacky fellows from the band 10CC is motor-driven effects device.

Very cool, check out the Wikipedia entry and the images page. Thanks Mark!

Going Further

There are lots of other things to try here:

• Get a bigger motor and bolt it directly to the guitar neck or body for permanent, switchable body vibration (do this only with crap project guitars of course)
   
• Mount motors or other electro-magnetic sources near pickups.
   
• Take the headphone out jack of your ipod and use hacked earbud/coil generators to pump mp3 signals directly into your pickups
   
• and so much more...

Have an idea you want to share? Give me a holler!