The Prism: A Laser Synth-Guitar

Step 20 Special Thanks, and Resource Links

First off, a Big Huge thanks to my friend Dave, who gave me his old busted Gibson Explorer clone to hack up for this project. He also gave lots of advice on guitar playing and how a guitar behaves, since I don't actually play guitar myself!

Thanks to my father-in-law, also a guitar player, who gave additional advice on how a guitar works and behaves.

A special thanks to Stephen Hobley, author of the Laser Harp article in Make 15. We chatted a bit and he was very helpful in helping me choose which direction to take this project.

Thanks to Thomas Henry for his original VCO design based on the XR2206, and to Scott Stites for posting the design and how to use it on his site.

A shout out to all my pals at KWartzLab, our budding hackerspace in Kitchener, Ontario! If you're from the K-dub I encourage you to check it out!

Thanks to Instructables member gmoon for advice (and an excellent Instructable) on refinishing guitars.

And last (but definitely not least!) thanks to my wife for yet again letting me plunk down a chunk of change and a lot of time on another hare-brained project. Her hand is also visible in the Refinishing step, gleefully chipping large sheets of paint off the guitar.

Important resources:

Thomas Henry's XR2206 VCO - upon which the Prism design is based
XR2206 datasheet - very useful to have, also contains a reference design used for the LFO
Sharp Rangefinder Datasheet
Google - to help me figure out what kind of guitar I was hacking up!
Mouser - for half the parts used on the Prism
Digikey - for the other half of the parts used
DealExtreme - a cheap source for lasers
Metal Supermarkets - a chain of stores in Ontario that sells metal to hobbyists
Sayal - a chain of electronics parts stores in Ontario

Comments

[pblanscet]

Wow, man. You got skillz!