Ebow

[Sean Costello]

Tom Duff wrote:
> 
> Anybody know what the circuit inside an Ebow looks like?
> It's encased in epoxy & at $100 a pop I'm not really interested
> in sacrificing it.  There's obviously a couple of
> eletromagnetic transducers (one with a magnetized core) and
> an 8-pin integrated circuit (I'm guessing some kind of
> op amp, but which one?) on a tiny PC board, but
> I'd like more detail.  I want to build an Ebow-controlled
> zither, but the requisite 50 or so ebows are too pricy to
> ponder.  On the other hand, I'm fairly well tricked out for
> winding pickups & assembling circuitry.

Check out http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US04075921__&language=en
- it's all there for ya.  You may also want to check out all the other
patents at the site that refer to this patent, as some of these patents
will offer refinements on the Heet design (i.e. ability to drive more
than 1 string at a time).  http://www.patents.ibm.com is one of the
greatest Internet tools ever, along with Altavista and Jamie Heilman's
site (this is more of an emeritus thing, as it hasn't been updated sine
1997 - but it was the 1st WWW site I ever went to).

Sean Costello