No signal generated so far

Posted on November 12, 2017

After discussing with an electric engineer friend of mine, he suggested that I used a perfboard instead of a breadboard to improve the connections quality. As that quality can affect the signal, I thought it would be a good idea to try. The photo above is what I ended up making, and I have to say I am proud of the quality of the soldering I did.

However, it still doesn’t work, which is quite frustrating. At some points, there were feedback squeals, but that is most probably because the emitting coil and the pickup coil were too close.

Looking at the schematics, things seem relatively simple, and logical. I spent some time with the IMCA electronics technician and his signal scope, and all seemed fine.

Above are the diagrams I found online. Remember, as the Ebow is proprietary and patented, whatever I find are DIY attempts and are not always easily reproduced.

• The diagram on the left is the one I followed so far. I found it in the DIY your own eBow effect for guitar YouTube video.
• The diagram in the center, in Japanese, is basically the EBow’s printed circuits with comments of someone trying to figure out what is where. I have to thank Naoto Hiéda for helping me read that diagram.
• The diagram on the right is another version, this one in Russian.

The last two diagrams were sent to me by the IMCA electronics technician. He found them in a Russian forum where there were discussions about the Ebow.

More investigation is in order it seems. During my readings related to this, I even stumbled on someone mentioning that the coil’s polarity was important. As I hadn’t thought of that, it’s another hurdle in my way…

I will have to put this aside for a while, so that I can concentrate on my IMCA 400 end-of-term works, and my ARTH 358 research paper and final exam.

Wooden case

As is the case when I hit a roadblock or when I get frustrated with a project that cannot move forward, I improve its looks or designs. So I created a small case to hold the electronics. This also helps me as it prevents having a lot of wires dangling around when hovering over the string and pickup, trying to generate a signal…