This thing was the first step towards 'electrifying' my homemade stringed instruments. This was way back when. I had this game set made out of round aluminum or some other kind of metal that resembled a pizza pan. On one side was a checkerboard design, on the other was a Chinese checkers game board. The 'pan' opened up and stored all the game pieces inside. In essence, when the pan was opened up I had 2 pans. After I had no one left to play the games with, I decided to find a new use for these aluminum pans.
I had these pretty thick and oversized rubber bands that I put around one of the pans. The size of the rubber bands gave nice low tones when plucked--tones similar to that of other stringed bass instruments. But the tones could only be heard if the pan was placed really close to the ears. And needless to say the tiny amp pictured above was not going to reproduce any low frequency sounds. So I had to explore other possibilities for amplification of that instrument.
But what that amp did turn out to be great for was the other pan, which I also put rubber bands around. But these rubber bands were the more typical thin and smaller type. Not good for bass sounds. But good for tenor type stringed instruments!
So I used an old speaker that I pulled out of a broken radio or something as the pickup or microphone. (I used to save old speakers and parts from old radios or tv's or other things that no longer worked). The good thing about using a speaker was that it would lay flat against the back of the pan and remain held in place by the rubber bands. The rubber bands served a dual purpose--the musical notes and keeping the speaker in place. A typical mic would not cooperate as well.
I had wires going from the speaker to a 1/4" plug on the other end for inserting into the mini amp. And when I turned on the amp, VOILA! I now had the sound of amplified rubber bands! It wasn't very musical and it was difficult to get the right tones. But if there was a recording I wanted to make I would mark the rubber bands just where I had 'fret' them in order to get the proper notes. And if I turned the amp up all the way it really sounded like a distorted guitar.
Here is a little recording I made using that set up. Remember, this is before I actually had any real instruments whatsoever. I had no musical training or any lessons. And the recording itself is very old and originally made on very cheap Certron cassette tapes from the 80s and early 90s. This may be as lo-fi as it gets.
There is my rubber band electric guitar! If I can locate the whereabouts of the pans I will gladly photograph them and post on here to give a better idea visually.
I also want to include a snip of how the bass rubber band instrument sounded:
Very hard to get the correct intonation but for me it was super cool and exciting because I got to experiment with sounds and music!
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