Mounting neon lights on your equipment, ever been done ?

lewibassist · #1 01-30-2005, 11:09 AM

Hiya i was woundering if anyone has mounted a neon strip or sumthing like that in an empty rack space. Or maybe on there pedal board. Or for an example like the sound systems you see in modded cars. They always have neons to make it eye catching and stand out. I was woundering if you can do the same thing with a stack ? .

Superdave · #2 01-30-2005, 11:30 AM

You could, but depending on the pickups of your bass you'd be getting a lot of fuzz and feedback.

Toasted · #3 01-30-2005, 11:42 AM

Not if you use Rope Lights

Folmeister · #4 01-30-2005, 01:14 PM

Racklite

jiant. · #5 01-30-2005, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toasted

Not if you use Rope Lights

Haha, I've been actually thinking of putting some on my rack or cab for the next big show we have.

Esquillama · #6 01-30-2005, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lewibassist

Hiya i was woundering if anyone has mounted a neon strip or sumthing like that in an empty rack space. Or maybe on there pedal board. Or for an example like the sound systems you see in modded cars. They always have neons to make it eye catching and stand out. I was woundering if you can do the same thing with a stack ? .

Check this out, maybe it's what you're looking for.
http://www.upstairs-records.com/odgewe20.html
or:
http://www.8thstreet.com/product.asp...Category=Cases
They look pretty cool.

Eric Moesle · #7 01-30-2005, 09:57 PM

Not a good idea. Neon lights induce noise in nearby electrical products like amps. I usually make it a point to unplug any neon bar lights hanging on the stage walls when I play.

SirPoonga · #8 01-30-2005, 10:10 PM

Ihttp://glowire.com/
I was thinking of embedding some in a bass and run off a 9v.

ADbassman · #9 01-30-2005, 10:18 PM

Humm...

Since the color of the glowire chances due to the frequency, wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to make it glow to the frequency of whatever note you were playing? Sometime tells me this would require a lot more equipment and money than its worth.

Esquillama · #10 01-31-2005, 08:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eric Moesle

Not a good idea. Neon lights induce noise in nearby electrical products like amps. I usually make it a point to unplug any neon bar lights hanging on the stage walls when I play.

I agree. Neon and flourescent lights can cause all kinds of noise and such.
The lights that are mentioned in my post above (via web link) are LED, and as far as I know,
they have none of those "noisy" qualities. It could be worth a look.

PlayTheBass · #11 01-31-2005, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADbassman

Humm...

Since the color of the glowire chances due to the frequency, wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to make it glow to the frequency of whatever note you were playing? Sometime tells me this would require a lot more equipment and money than its worth.

Check out color organs. They were popular back in the 60's-70's, and you can still buy small, cheap color organ kits at electronics stores. The ones I've seen respond to amplitude, not frequency (though multi-band color organs can respond to multiple frequency ranges). Some have line inputs, and some have microphones. Just make sure to get one with an input sensitivity adjustment on it.

JMX · #12 01-31-2005, 08:22 AM

Hmm, Trace-Elliot....

PolkaHero · #13 01-31-2005, 08:31 PM

I've got an empty rackspace that I'd love to incorporate a light system that would respond to my playing. Could you incorporate one of these color organs with a some kind of rackspace light?

PlayTheBass · #14 01-31-2005, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PolkaHero

I've got an empty rackspace that I'd love to incorporate a light system that would respond to my playing. Could you incorporate one of these color organs with a some kind of rackspace light?

Definitely. Here's an example of a simple one that you can hook to speaker wires for the input (I'd check the power input range before hooking an amp directly to this one), and then you can just plug up to 200W of the lights of your choice into it, and it would flash in time to your playing:

single-channel color organ

And hey, for under $10, you can't lose!

I've used these things for lightning controllers (triggered by a thunder track) on Halloween before, and they're pretty cool.

Sean Mc

**Kelly Lee** · #15 01-31-2005, 09:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Esquillama

I agree. Neon and flourescent lights can cause all kinds of noise and such.

As JMX pointed out, Trace Elliot used lighting. Flourescent UV blacklights to be exact. I can tell you that those heads sure didn't pickup any noise.

My current Trace is a rackmount so I don't have the factory blacklight. Well I like that Trace look so what I did was use two UV cold cathode tubes that the PC gamers use to light up their towers. I get compliments on the looks of my rig all the time. I replaced the bulbs in my glorified power strip with red X-mas light bulbs as well. Here is a pic. BTW, no noise