For a while I've been living with this idea of putting a momentary five button pad for finger tapping cut-off filters on an instrument. But with the Stick I can't really imagine where to put it. Maybe on an extra "stand" connected to the block pickup housing?

Examples of kill switch players are Tom Morello and Buckethead. But with five filters you can do a lot more cool stuff, like for example playing pretty decent goa trance on a Stick, using only the natural sound - no synths.

Has anyone experimented with something similar?

Hmmm, I think I see what your are going after. Are you saying actual electronic filters, but with a finger pad for engaging them on and off? For stutter/glitch type effects? Or maybe I don't understand.

Please elaborate, it seems like a neat idea. I am starting to get into basic electronics so this is way beyond me at this point, but it gets me thinking.

I just got the entire Navy's electronic engineering course, its insane(free&legal). I'm trying to get into creative stuff like this. A dream goal, but I am making some progress.

Basic kill switches are easy enough to make. you could probably place them on the outside of the pickup housing somewhere (Dremel a hole out).

Wiring wise, its very simple. Just make it so the switch crosses the output and the ground, and bam, instant silence. You can use whatever switch you see fit (Mometary, mini toggle, whatever), as long as it does that function.

Yeah, like that! As long as you hold down one button a filter is activated and as you lift your finger this filter is bypassed. With five buttons you can simply play a long chord/not with the left hand and finger tap rhythmic patterns on the five (differently "tuned") filters.

I bet you could set this up with an iPhone, as it has multi touch sensible screen. But the issue with the iphone is that it doesn't sound as good as a real analog filter or a good digital audio interface (like the RME I'm using).

A better way might be to have the tapping pad send MIDI so you can assign anything. If using an analog filter bank like the AKAI MFC42 you could simply have the five buttons call up different degrees of cut-off while any button would put the AKAI online in the signal chain (and bypassed if now button is tapped). Wouldn't this be fun!

Have you ever messed around with a KAOS pad ? I like your idea,I'm going to steal it.

Yes, Kaoss pad does similar things. But would you gaffer tape it onto the Stick? And where? Kaoss pad is so big! Best would be a simple row of four buttons same size as computer keys that sends MIDI. You could feed that into a Kaoss pad if you like those filters. I imagine there should be ultra small touch sensitive buttons available today.

But hey - what would be really cool is if such "kill switch style" filtering buttons could make it into the PASV4 design as an option!!! There is actually space for a row of four touch buttons on the surface between the melody side strings and its knobs. The PASV4 already has the circuits for this, as now controlled by the mid knob.

Here is a picture where I have marked out the possible position for four "kill switch" style filtering buttons:

With something like the KAOS pad you would need a stand or something off of the Stick.

Maybe if you could put the electronics is a small case that could fit on the back under the bridge and if there is some sort of touch sensitive pads that you could adhere to the pickup housing like you've shown,run a conduit from the box to the pads and the melody or bass output would go to the box then out .

You could possibly use resistive 'touch sensors' for the pads. They are very thin and respond to pressure. Increased pressure lowers the internal resistance...route them to your electronics (pehaps the size of a deck of cards, mounted on the back of the instrument...). You could set up a voltage comparator to decide when the 'kill' part was activated, etc...

I used to use these when I worked in robotics - they made excellent touch sensors for robotic grippers.

You could also look for small Piezo sensors - they'll produce a spike when struck.

Dave

Excellent advice, Dave. Thank you!

I see! So u want to have the option to bypass the mid filter knob and use the kill switches to make quick rhythmic filter changes... or?