Play music through your guitar

In this instructable I'm going to teach you how to play music through your guitar.

Step 1 What you need

What you need:
A guitar (obviously)
headphones (the kind that you put in your ears)
an amplifier
a guitar cable
a cd player, mp3 player, iPod, etc.

OK, that's it!

Comments

[Rush_2112]

Yeah! Snakes and Arrows! Rush is the greatest band to ever live!!!!

[kt2112]

AGREE! They are my favortie band of ALL time! I wish i Could have gone to see time machine show :(. hope they come back around soon.

[bowmaster]

this is so hax. No real reason to do so, but still really cool.

[mpappas1]

Orrr...you could just get an amp that has an aux port and plug an aux cable from the ipod to the amp...

[fluxorz]

sorry, random: what digitech pedal do you have back there in the picture on step 3? i had the rp300, then traded up to the rpx400. yours looks like.... rp200, am i right?

[ski4jesus]

Orrrr u could just buy an adaptor and plug ur ipod right into the amp....

[RonGarza]

The point is to eliminate noise or buzz, and that can be done with a humbucker guitar pickup, which is what amps use. But, don't spend that much money -- you can accomplish the same with an audio transformer. These are cheap and small (thumb-sized). Solder one side's terminals to a plug to the CD player; solder the other side's terminals to a guitar cable (or a plug that will take a guitar cable). I used this setup with "play along" CDs (karaoke for guitar). Clean!

[awesaomeness5]

hey do you have an instructable on it?

[RonGarza]

Sorry, no, I did not put up an Instructable on it. This is for playing CDs, radios, etc. through an amp. That is what you are looking for, right? kyismaster has a great and simple solution that does the same thing without having to solder anything, just use an adapter and jumper cables. Oh, the adapter must be AC in to AC out.

[kyismaster]

oooor you can just use a adapter... it goes from 1/8 to 1/4 for input into the amp, and use a 1/8 to 1/8 male cable and plug it straight into your cd player or etc. This is how i plug my elect. practice drum set into my cheap line 6 amp.

[kyismaster]

For even better response, replace all the jacks to gold pinned. or plug. so simple.. so cheap.

[capkloud]

WRONG. regardless of the state of your jacks and plugs, unless all of the internal wiring, and tracks on the circuit board(s) are gold, it wont improve anything. also, silver is much better then gold, as well as cheaper. gold is only used because it does not corrode. do not believe the BS lies you read in advertisements.

[awesaomeness5]

calm down dude he might have some personally experience but if you do want to prove that silver is better than maybe you should just show your points and not say that ads are BS, while they might be you should inform him that that is not correct. you know?

[capkloud]

"showing my points" would be useless. who am i? am i some well known expert on the matter? no. if he wants to find the truth, he can google it and read up on it, instead of just believing everything he hears. as for "informing" him that it is not correct, what the hell do you think i just did? telling someone something is wrong, is informing them that it is wrong. informing him WHY it is incorrect, falls under my previous point once again. if he just believes what i tell him because i say it, then thats sad on his part, and he should stop being in any form of community. the same with you.

[kyismaster]

Gold is still better. It doesn't matter what the damn wiring looks like, if its not properly ground, it doesnt matter what material it is made out of, it could be made of fiber optic for all i care, it won't sound good without being properly grounded. Gold is much better (well, in my application) i don't know what your using it for, hopefully it isn't too cheap of a gold. So seriously Take that cork out of your rear, and take a walk. Jeez. Of course i have personal experience in this field, and either way, what if you have low quality silver, what will you do now. What use copper? pfff. "prevents corrosion" really? The guitar input will probably corrode before the jack the way your saying it. Don't you know gold is a softer material than silver? Hell, i can hit a silver coin with a spoon and it and dent it, imagine what i can do with a gold one. You will begin to notice the effect of Gold vs Silver when you begin to work with Video, audio is expectable, but if your an audiophile like me, you notice things, and small sounds. (( im getting to tired, ill stop here, lost train of thought (1 am))

[lapiosaatana]

or you could only blug your mp3 to your amp : D

[LeviMan_2001]

Here's something interesting. If you take the left and right and hold them over the two coils in a humbucker pickup (left one over one coil, right over the other) then it will cancel out anything panned in the middle, usually vocals. It's kinda neat to play with this. It works because the pickups are wired to "buck" the hum (out of phase).

[scoobbrandon]

could you plug an ipod into your amp on the imput and have the guitar on the output so it causes the strings to vibrate and play the music

[danymw]

 i thought about that but i don't want to burn the pickups,who knows

[lolcat360]

pickups only pick up vibrations... not send them out. If you could somehow reverse the effect it might be possible... but if u try that dont hold me responsible! lol

[bishopdante]

you'd be wrong there.

A pickup is a copper coil with 6 steel pole pieces and a magnet on the back. It can be used for many purposes. It's basically equivalent to a solenoid.

You can build a speaker out of a pickup or vice versa, all the old electric guitars were built using speaker parts.

A pickup is an electro-magnetic transducer.

[geetarfrik]

You are very wrong there. A guitar only has circuitry to send a signal. Thats like trying to recieve a signal from an unplugged speaker.

[bishopdante]

Although I'd say if you want to check it by connecting up an amplifier's outputs to an pickup on a guitar to see if the strings go (it sounds a bit like reverb), use a headphones output and start with the volume very low. The tiny copper wires in a guitar pickup aren't really designed for high current, you can melt them pretty easily.

Also, for the reversability effect, lots of people use a standard yamaha NS-10 speaker as a kick drum mic. There's a few instructables here about how to do that.

http://www.zyra.org.uk/sp-mic.htm

http://www.instructables.com/id/SPKR-MiK--How-to-make-a-microphone-from-a-speaker/

The fundamental thing to understand is that when a wire moves through a magnetic field, the electrons in the wire therefore move around creating a current. If you put a current through a wire, it generates a magnetic field.

This is how loads of stuff works. Electromagnets, dynamic microphones, guitar pickups, transformers, speakers, Inductors...

What's clever about the guitar pickup is that the pole pieces are used to magnetise the strings, so when they move, the coils generate a current.

[bishopdante]

A speaker can be used as a microphone. A microphone can be used as a speaker. It all depends upon what you connect it up to.

If you connect an amplifier's outputs to a guitar pickup, it'll agitate the strings much like a speaker coil agitates the speaker diaphragm.

It's not one way in the slightest, it's electromagnetic induction, it works both ways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction

[danymw]

 exactly .

[danymw]

 i do think you can make the strings vibrate but with atleast 3 times bigger pickup set (more power)

[snowpenguin]

Just get a head phone cable, male to male 1/8" an a 1/8" to 1/4" adapter and plug it in the amp.

[bloke2022]

I know right?

[Jodex]

The quality ain't the best obviously....

[cheesefetty]

i have a jackson fender too =->

[lolcat360]

Thats actually an ibanez :)

[kyrinp]

it's a jackson js series dinky

[lolcat360]

were u talking to me?

[xXMiNdFrEaKXx]

I have that same guitar!

[lolcat360]

Seriously???

[cheesefetty]

i didnt see the head stock

[kt2112]

Good Choice of Music and great instructable, RUSH ROCKS! ;)

[kneecaps]

couldnt you just plug the ipod into the amp... using a male male 3.5mm plugs and a guitar plug adapter. annd then ur done

[Speedmite]

Tried, make screeching noises and barely herad the song

[Speedmite]

So no, you can do the plug adapter.