Hey all,

Is it possible to change one tone knob to a type of 'feedback circuit'? I would like it to be possible to get decent Hendrixy + Sonic Youth/Nirvana type harmonic feedback at any time when playing with distortion.

Zero would be switched off, and 10 would be insane out of control feedback (not the squeely, high pitched kind, but the kind you can manipulate with string bends etc). Would such a circuit have to be active or could you get away with it without a battery

BTW I have a Highway One and a Blacktop Strat, both with hot pickups.

Feedback comes from the interaction between the amp and the guitar at higher volume levels. There is no guitar based mod to obtain feedback. Swap out your bridge pup for a Dimarzio Super Distorion S (DP218). That pup is rich in harmonics. If you want those harmonics to swell and blossom into a musical sounding feedback you're going to have to turn up your amp. Quite a bit. Or use a single coil and get a big honkin' amp rig and turn it up a lot.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

SOLID!

Actually, there is such a mod. Installing a Fernandes Sustainer or a Sustainiac in place of your neck pickup will give you controllable amounts of feedback at any volume. Turned off, your guitar functions normally. Turned on at a moderate level will give you infinite sustain, and as you turn up the knob it'll shift into feedback.

Those systems use a powered pickup coil that basically acts in reverse -- instead of the string motion generating an electrical signal from the pickup, a signal is sent into the coil which drives the strings like a magnetic motor. If you use the single-coil version you'll lose the neck pickup entirely. But they make a double coil version (looks like a humbucker) that has one normal pickup coil and one driver coil, so you could still have a functioning pickup in the neck position.

The manufacturers explain it better than I can. Google "Fernandes Sustainer" and "Sustainiac" and read their websites. (Both are active circuits that require batteries.)

Feedback can also be achieved at low volumes without modifying your guitar. Google "E-Bow".

Neither approach is exactly like cranking your amp up really loud. They don't respond as "organically", and you can't really flatpick while holding the E-Bow in your picking hand. But they also can do things that can't be achieved simply by turning your amp up loud.

This sounds interesting, thanks for the info!

I wonder if the 'feedback coil' could be hidden under the pickguard... Now that would be a cool little feature.

I guess in the meantime I have to rely on good ole fashion volume and gain

No you can't hide it. It needs to replace the neck pickup. What it does is uses magnetic pull to move the string. You can only really operate it whilst using the bridge pickup because it interferes with the middle pickup sound being so close to it. It is a brilliant system, but limits as much as it offers.

Or you could try the Reeves Gabriels trick of using a battery drill close to the pickups to get weird sounds. Move it nearer and further from the pickups to change pitch.

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No no and no