Electric Diddley Bow

This is a diddley bow, or a single stringed guitar.

 

It is made using an old milk bottle, guitar string, bits of wood, a washer and some screws. all of these pieces are just random bits left over from various things. I put these things together and out popped a diddley bow.

The next step was to make the pickup. I used a coil of copper wire from an old remote controlled car with a screw through the middle and a magnet stuck on top. This was then wired into a socket and was ready to go. Although this is very simple, the pickup works extremely well and the sound is completely clear. This worked well through the speakers but didn't work well with some guitar effects software that I downloaded to my computer. this was because the the computer could hardly pick up the weak signal. I fixed this by replacing the plug socket with a preamp. The pickup was wired directly into the left input and right output. So if you plug it into the red socket it is raw and if you plug it into the white socket it goes through the preamp.

Some features of the diddley bow are the tuning screw that can be  tightened with an allen key, one of the screws painted red to show which way is on, a small red dot on the switch that can be seen when it is on, and the plug that has been painted.

The diddley bow looks slightly like it has come from the world of steampunk.










This is a video of me playing it! In the video, when I plug it into the computer, it is going through the guitar effects software.