Hello vvinslovv, thanks for this question. The most likely wire to use is regular old music wire, which is spring-tempered steel wire, the same stuff used for guitar and piano strings and so forth. The plain (unwound) wire is available in long coils, and, being steel, it nicely drives a magnetic pickup. The question is, what gauge of wire? If I recall correctly, I used something like .014" or .016", also known as gauge 5 or 6 for this type of wire. That's fairly thin, like between a typical B or G string on a guitar. I wanted thin because thinner will support the very high harmonics better than thicker. But, really, you could experiment with any thickness. The other thing is, my shop is only about 20 feet long. If you can get much longer, like 50 or more feet, some additional interesting effects come into play. Also worth noting are Ellen Fullman's *really* long strings, often over 100 feet long, but they operate on a different principal as she excites them longitudinally (waves of compression and rarefaction running longways along the string, rather than the usual side-to-side) for some really wonderful and unexpected sounds -- see www.ellenfullman.com/.
I have one of those coming out of my body sometimes.
bro i need to put one of these in a room, those sounds are givin me the chills
very cool
I wish the thumbnail was part of a real animation as its' music video
why is it so sinister
bart
SB-129
damn, i've wanted to do this forever (in addition to everything in your books)! what type of string do you recommend?
Hello vvinslovv, thanks for this question. The most likely wire to use is regular old music wire, which is spring-tempered steel wire, the same stuff used for guitar and piano strings and so forth. The plain (unwound) wire is available in long coils, and, being steel, it nicely drives a magnetic pickup. The question is, what gauge of wire? If I recall correctly, I used something like .014" or .016", also known as gauge 5 or 6 for this type of wire. That's fairly thin, like between a typical B or G string on a guitar. I wanted thin because thinner will support the very high harmonics better than thicker. But, really, you could experiment with any thickness. The other thing is, my shop is only about 20 feet long. If you can get much longer, like 50 or more feet, some additional interesting effects come into play. Also worth noting are Ellen Fullman's *really* long strings, often over 100 feet long, but they operate on a different principal as she excites them longitudinally (waves of compression and rarefaction running longways along the string, rather than the usual side-to-side) for some really wonderful and unexpected sounds -- see www.ellenfullman.com/.