Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | Wireless Magnetic Pickup for Acoustic Guitar with Effects |
Dylan Ouart Wilson Ngai |
Daniel Frei | design_document0.pdf final_paper0.pdf proposal0.pdf |
|
| Team: Dylan Ouart ouart2 Wilson Ngai ngai2 Problem: An acoustic guitar cannot be plugged into an amplifier very easily unless it is bought with this capability already. This feature is relatively new and also drives up the cost of the guitar. Many people with older guitars may wish to be able to plug into an amplifier to make their signal louder. An example where this is useful is playing live. There are ways to insert a pickup into an acoustic guitar, however many of these ways are either expensive or require you to make permanent modifications to the guitar. This is usually not a desirable solution. Solution: We propose a system that incorporates a magnetic pickup that transmits wirelessly to a standard amplifier. It should be easy to install and remove from the sound hole of an acoustic guitar. We also think it would be cool to be able to add effects to the signal. These would give the guitar a wider variety of sounds to be able to be played. There is a product on the market that is similar to this idea, however it does not incorporate any effects. It is also pretty expensive (greater than $100). We want to bring this price down to make the product more affordable. Components: Pickup - This is essentially a coil of wire wrapped around a magnet. Standard pickups use 42, 43, or 44 AWG wire. We want to innovate on this idea and go even smaller in order to get higher inductance in the pickup to get greater sensitivity. This also will help us reduce the size of the pickup. Wireless Transmitter/Receiver - The latency of the system needs to be low so no delay is perceived to the listener. For this reason we were looking into using R-F circuits utilizing frequency modulation because the sound quality is better. Pre-amplification - This should be a relatively simple module that amplifies the signal coming out of the pickup from the mV range to around 1 or 2 volts because this will be easier picked up by the amplifier and the signal will be louder to begin with. There will also be a filter to smooth out any noise from the pickup. The filter will be a low pass filter with a cutoff frequency being around 1500 Hz because highest note on a guitar is 1318.510 Hz. Effects - In order to make the sound have effects, we were thinking about transforming the signal into triangle waves, square waves, and also incorporate an octave effect. An octave is twice the frequency or half the frequency of the note played. The triangle and square wave effects would give the guitar a more electronic sound. Power - The pickup does not need powered because the voltages and currents are induced in the coil when a string is plucked. However the transmitter, pre-amplification, and effects will have to be powered. This should be a relatively low level of power needed so a 9V battery and a voltage regulator should be sufficient. |
|||||