the lubemole
ABOUT:
$0.99US Elmo guitar, discovered at Goodwill Industries in Portland. The default in-store sounds were pretty raw, mostly due to the low battery state. I assumed it had at least some kind of potential. It looked a little bit like this
but smaller, redder, and with star shaped buttons instead of character faces. Obviously, I forgot to take a pic of the unharmed machine...but you get the picture.
Of course, "lubemole" is a silly anagram.
BENDS/TWEAKS:
- Case rebuild
- Panel mount switches for "strum" and "whammy"
- On/off switch
- Line out and line out volume control
- Super-mega-hyper speed
- Mega wide speed control
- Low-speed1 and low-speed2 settings
- Two (2) loopy modes, each with on/off and momentary
- Glitchy momentary switch
None of these are really unique or amazing, but they can sound pretty decent. I mostly enjoy the very slow digital scrapings and/or loopy modes.
The battery compartment and guitar "neck" were kept over from the original device, but mounted (poorly) on the new housing. A glossy blue hand paint job finishes the look. There's left over space on the front panel for a logo or stencil of some kind.
IMAGES:
Here are some lubemole images for your viewing pleasure. Click on a thumbnail for a closer look. The first set shows the lubemole in the development/dismemberment stages...
and the second set shows the completed device from various perspectives:
SOUNDS/SAMPLES:
All samples were recorded directly from the lubemole's line out jack directly to the line input of a SoundBlaster card. All tracks were performed raw, solo, one take, with no effects added.
The first two samples demonstrate what the device sounded like prior to modification:
- lubemole_pre01.mp3 - (0:22) - 533kB
- lubemole_pre02.mp3 - (0:38) - 901kB
The following 3 are brief ad-hoc solo pieces after modification. Most of the bends are represented:
- lubemole_post01.mp3 - (1:43) - 2.4MB
- lubemole_post02.mp3 - (2:03) - 2.8MB
- lubemole_post03.mp3 - (0:34) - 817kB