Pedal "neons"

[Dylan]

Has anyone ever hooked up 4+ LEDs under a pedal to get that "floating on lights" look? I'm tempted to give it a try on a simple pedal such as a true bypass looper. There are clips which give LEDs a 180 degree viewing angle so maybe with those and some high brightness LEDs it could work?

[Travis]

I just did exactly that, 180 degree clips and all.  It was a bit of a surprise for the guitarist  when he lit it up onstage for the first time.

What I found worked the best:
Tall feet on the enclosure.

Contrasting indicator on top, higher value resistor to reduce brightness.

Run the special lighting through your effect switch, with an additional toggle to turn it off.

Using high-brightness LEDs, two/three will be more than enough to effectively light up the floor beneath the pedal.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

The ultimate in tricking out a box would be a smoke generator, I think the model train guys would have various ways. Imagine smoke pouring out & you say to the rest of the band "it always does that" :lol:

[petemoore]

Flamepots and Rockets....in a "Bugs Bunny 'just add water'" space ship, that 'antenna's' up and defolds and has a large blinking sign that says: "Your effect is 'ACTIVE' 'ACTIVE' 'ACTIVE".
 RUnning lights under the effect...scool..

[Yuan Han]

attach a flint or something to the bottom of the pedal, so when you on/off it, there'll be sparks !

I'm quite interested to try this out (neon lights below ground, not the flint thing!), but i'm not sure how to lift the pedal off the ground. I think it would need to be at least 1/2 a centimetre... but then it might look abit high profile....hmm

[Dylan]

I just did exactly that, 180 degree clips and all.  It was a bit of a surprise for the guitarist  when he lit it up onstage for the first time.

What I found worked the best:
Tall feet on the enclosure.

Contrasting indicator on top, higher value resistor to reduce brightness.

Run the special lighting through your effect switch, with an additional toggle to turn it off.

Using high-brightness LEDs, two/three will be more than enough to effectively light up the floor beneath the pedal.

I think I will use the feet they put on the bottom of wah pedals to lift it off the ground, then wire 4 high brightness LEDs in parallel on the 3PDT switch (one indicator, three neons). Putting the LEDs in a triangle would probably look good.

[The Tone God]

The ultimate in tricking out a box would be a smoke generator, I think the model train guys would have various ways.

I never found it hard to make a smoke generator. I can do it with just about anything.

Any device can be light emitting for a short period of time. :lol:

Andrew

[R.G.]

The ultimate in tricking out a box would be a smoke generator, I think the model train guys would have various ways. Imagine smoke pouring out & you say to the rest of the band "it always does that"

Oh, my gawd!

Sir, I stand in awe of that idea.

That's too good not to do. I found a trick with 555's and piezo disks that will do it, too.

I admire the hell out of your mind, sir.

[petemoore]

Curb effects are cool!!!
 I get these old styld computer keyboards [with the useless 'other' style plugs], and the only salvage I get from them is the 1/2 inch, tall solid rubber, square/pyramid feet.

[travissk]

Pedalboard pyrotechnics - awesome

you could probably use dry ice to make lots of smoke; it's cheap and relatively safe (with the right precautions).

[The Tone God]

Pedalboard pyrotechnics - awesome

you could probably use dry ice to make lots of smoke; it's cheap and relatively safe (with the right precautions).

Sticking dry ice into a Ge fuzz box. Man that'll screw up the biasing. Can't wait to see a debugging question here for that situation.

Topic: HELP!!! (or any other completely vague topic description)

Hi. I have a Ge Thunderbutt fuzz. When I stick dry ice into it to get that cool smoking effect it sounds like crap. Any help plz ?

The thread can then errupt in to either another flame-fest about "fuzzboxes on cold floors" or which dry ice sounds better.

Andrew

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

The thread can then errupt in to either another flame-fest about "fuzzboxes on cold floors" or which dry ice sounds better. Andrew

A friend is in the crew setting up a temporary ice rink for some stage show here, maybe he can try out some fuzzes
"Jimi on Ice", I'd pay to see that..

[Regan]

Heheheheh,
After the gravity of some of the threads here right now(and once every 6 monthes or so:) ) its nice to have a fun thread.
I think it would be pretty cool to have a pedal shoot out some steam when you stepped on it, maybe some type of miniature aerosol can? since we are taking this route, why not use one of those lighter based torches-be perfect for the "hotfoot distortion"
Serious though,if you look at surplus places like all electronics etc. you can get miniature neon or flourescent lamps that would be cool on pedals. I would use it on a pimped out colored enclosure with dice drilled for the knobs and the switch and jack nuts and washers brass plated -maybe a tiger striped border around the sides. By the way the pedal would HAVE to be an autowah.
Regan

[Bent Penguin]

Has anyone ever hooked up 4+ LEDs under a pedal to get that "floating on lights" look? I'm tempted to give it a try on a simple pedal such as a true bypass looper. There are clips which give LEDs a 180 degree viewing angle so maybe with those and some high brightness LEDs it could work?

Hi, I just did something somewhat similar.

http://diystompboxes.com/sboxforum/viewtopic.php?t=23601

[Dylan]

Heh, that's pretty cool.  

[travissk]

Sticking dry ice into a Ge fuzz box. Man that'll screw up the biasing. Can't wait to see a debugging question here for that situation.

I know that's a joke, but In all seriousness, I meant that you could possibly use it, but not inside of the actual stompbox ... maybe everyone could design a stompbox designed completely for a laser light and fog show. True bypass, of course.

[Hal]

oh man we had this same thread a couple months ago...and like a year before then.

still makes me laugh, though...especially since i once called the DS-1 the "honda civic of guitar effects"

[jsleep]

I believe the EH tube pedals have "running lights" so to speak.  Towards the tubes to increase the illumination of the tubes.  I guess they do it to accentuate the "tube look"  might be cool to replace the white LEDs with blue or something like that.

JD

[Nasse]

to accentuate the "tube look" might be cool to replace the white LEDs with blue or something like that.

There was a claim that Behringer once had an effect processor which had a tube in front panel. The joke was it was not connected to the circuit, but he tube sound was done artificially. The tube was illuminated with orange leds.

I think you need some blue light, maybe some uv led would be coolest looking, they are now commonly available. And of course some reddish orange added. Maybe you could create cool effects with uv and fluorecent paint. But don´t know if the UV radiation is safe, maybe it is weak enough from a distance... Maybe I could do an amp top project, with a mesh in front and the interior painted with fluorecent light and some uv leds. You could add a Wunderbaum, Fuzzy Dices and a Michelin Man and a Pikachu figure too, what you could not do with small effect pedal...

One not so often used idea for general indicators might be animated leds. Two leds quite near each other and continuously blinking after each other is good eye-catcher, even at low intensity. I think Ghosbusters have such indicators in their fabulous gear, and thirteen science fiction movies in a dozen. That would be killer for belt-attached boxes. I have a silly cheap mobile phone  activity detector, looks like a small chair made of clear plastic, and it has just three small red leds inside, but it is very easy to notice although the leds are not bright.

I did some measurements with my keychain led torch and some overhead projector film. Quess you could add the Batman logo without lenses, but the pedal must be quite big...

[R.G.]

OK, the Smoker is shaping up like this:

Radio Shack piezo disk, run at resonance above audio with a 555, inside a tiny plastic cup into which you put water. When run, the piezo ultrasonically blatts out 5 micron water particles, which look like smoke. To juice things up a bit, you could (and probably should) use a high-intensity LED set up to narrow-beam up through the smoke exiting the pedal, so it would show up even in the dark on stage.

By the way, there is another great model train effect. It uses a white LED driven by a "sputtering" signal derived from a pseudorandom generator. In the model train context, it looks like an arc welder. In a pedal, it would look like an intermittent arc inside the pedal. Coupled with the smoke generator, should be dynamite.