DIY

WORKSHOP

PICKUP THE PHONE

A Les Paul-style guitar pickup from a salvaged cordless phone. By Thomas Arey

Photograph by Sam Murphy

We in the maker world stand on the shoulders of them up and see what treasures were inside each. giants. Last year I had the opportunity to attend a Curiously enough, other than the parts related to lecture given by the great guitarist Les Paul. RF signal transmission, both units were very similar While he did talk about his music career, in this inside. The circuit boards in both had a fair amount setting he concentrated on how he came to develop of small surface-mount technology (SMT) parts and some of his inventions. These included the modern proprietary integrated circuits, but there were still solid-body electric guitar and multitrack recording. dozens of through-hole parts that could fill my parts It was clear that Paul was not only a true maker in bins for future projects (Figure B). every sense of the word, he was also a true scrounger. After stripping the phones down to their circuit His first functional electric guitar was made from boards, I harvested all the parts I could with my a telephone handset microphone and the audio trusty shearcutters. I use Xcelite 170M cutters but amplification components from a table radio. any side cutters with blades thin enough to get I had Paul’s use of telephone handsets in mind under the components and still leave enough lead when my regular trash day scrounging route turned length to work with in the future will do. up a pair of well-used cordless telephones. The first run-through turned up 7 LEDs, a 4MHz

It was interesting to find both an older 49MHz and crystal, a 5V voltage regulator, 5 trimmer capacitors, a more modern 900MHz phone tossed into the same an electret-style microphone, 2 earpiece speakers, trash can (Figure A, next page). I was curious to open 3 antennas, and a fistful of small Phillips-head screws.

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