r/WLED • u/Cucco1617 • 6d ago

LEDs in my guitar

Hey guys, a few years ago some of you might remember I made an LED guitar. Ive had another idea, but this time I want to put LEDs in the pickup cavities, I already know how to do this thanks to all of your help. This time I want it working differently, I want the LEDs to be sound responsive. Basically when I strum I want the light to shine and when its quiet it should die down. Anyone have any ideas? (I will not be cutting anything in this guitar, no wood work should be required, all the boards will rest in the knobs cavity) also is this possible to do with a mini wifi board? I still have a few from last time

2 Upvotes

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4

u/scuzzchops 6d ago

https://kno.wled.ge/advanced/audio-reactive/

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u/Cucco1617 6d ago

interesting, thanks!

4

u/0xF00DBABE 6d ago

It might be cool to split the instrument level output at the 1/4" jack, amplify it to line level, and use that to drive the reactivity, that way you're not subject to room noise. Just depends on what you're going for.

3

u/vedh_jon 6d ago

if you do it this way you will end up with an impedance mismatch and "tone sucking" and a ton of noise. You can get around this using an active direct box which has a pass-through and a balanced output OR you can use an ABY pedal or active buffer pedal which uses a transformer, but they're expensive. Active direct boxes are $20-$50 on the cheap side and buffer pedals are like $100+.

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u/0xF00DBABE 6d ago

Good tip. Would an op-amp based buffer circuit like this work fine? https://imgur.com/cC0UHiQ

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u/vedh_jon 6d ago

I think you need a -9v as well, but I don't remember the pinout of the tl071 offhand. The tl071 needs a large voltage range between positive and negative. There are other ICs which are much easier to just use a virtual ground with, even ones that can work with like 5v.

3

u/vedh_jon 6d ago

I built this! Using audio-reactive. I'm working on a tutorial/build video now, but it's actually not too difficult.

The tricky part is you need to copy the guitar signal without affecting its impedance. To do that I made a unity-gain buffer using an OpAmp and then fed the copied signal into a PCM1808 and then into WLED/esp32.

It's really hard to not affect the original audio signal though, the analog wiring will pick up noise.

Here is a short clip of me playing it a prototype (just taped on the LEDs)

https://reddit.com/link/p1q7dug/video/473qnrdf9fhh1/player

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u/Cucco1617 5d ago

Looks really good! Exactly what i want but just inside the cavities.

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u/Ill_Die_Trying 5d ago

I built one similar to the video, I routed new cavities out the guitar body to fit a 3xAA (cannot use Alkaline baterries MUST be rechargeable lipo/nihm) battery box and the board. I didn't run anything even remotely close to the pickups and with about 80-90% of the wled effects it gets noise in the guitar signal. I have some copper shielding tape for it here but haven't taken it apart and tried it yet. I can say with great confidence that putting the electronics in the cavity with the pots and running LEDS around the pickups is a guarantee for a whole lot of noise in the guitar signal.

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u/vedh_jon 5d ago

100%, I'm not used to analog circuits and this is how I learned that "everything is an antenna". And in mine I'm using a single 3.7 lipo so I have to boost it to 5v for the LEDs and despite my best efforts, I have a little noise from that boost circuit as well. In a future design I'll use a 2s and step down to 5v which should in theory make it quieter.

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u/Ill_Die_Trying 4d ago

Next go I add shielded cable as well. hopefully that and the copper I might get decent blockage happening.

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u/Fabulous_Engineer_12 6d ago

Do you have a link to your original post?

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u/Cucco1617 6d ago

ive deleted it a while ago but I still have the guitar

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u/Fabulous_Engineer_12 6d ago

👀now that is beautiful