The story

Months ago, I went down another YouTube rabbit hole (as one does) about making a DIY telephone mic. And not a smartphone. No, we’re talking the handset of an old school telephone. I was very intrigued and decided to make my own! Having never done anything like that, I was surprised how simple it was. I got me a $10 thrift store telephone, soldered an XLR connector to it, and I was off to the races. I messed around with it for a bit, and then decided to sample my Yamaha Compass series (CPX500 NT) acoustic guitar through it. It had very old strings on it but I figured it’s going to sound “lofi” anyway so I didn’t bother changing them. I sampled (mostly) the open strings, with 1 velocity layer and 3 round robins, across 6 articulations.

The 6 articulations are: Fingerstyle, Picked, Muted Fingerstyle, Harmonic Fingerstyle, Harmonic Picked, and Harmonic Strum. And they are all keyswitch-able. You have full control over ADSR and velocity sensitivity, as well as a DIY bathroom IR reverb, and some fire crackling Noise for a bit of extra “lofi-ness”. You can also show/hide the FX panel which has a lowpass filter, distortion, rotary, delay, chorus, and reverb modules. And finally, there are 11 additional presets to explore.

Here is Telephone Guitar in action

Telephone Guitar is my second sample library ever (my first being Rain Choir). It was purely experimental and I don’t even use MIDI guitar all that much, as a guitarist myself. But I think this library sounds very unique. It’s definitely not a realistic guitar sound, but it sure is a cool sound, and I’m happy with it.

I want to give a huge thank you to some of my fellow samplist friends such as Marco Iannello, NickMor, Fred Poirier, and Ever Westerly. They were all a huge help in troubleshooting my Decent Sampler script, and gave me invaluable feedback. Also a huge thanks to David Hilowitz of Decent Sampler for fixing some bugs that initially prevented me from releasing Telephone Guitar. And unlike Rain Choir, time around, I took the photo myself, in a way that enhances the lofi and DIY vibe of the library.

Interface

Reviews for Telephone Guitar

Leave a review to let others know what you thought of the instrument!

  • Fantastic

    I'm not a guitarist and have zero technical knowledge about them, however I absolutely love everything about this library. It sounds great to me, is extremely flexible with all it's options. In fact it's been the most accessible option for me and has allowed me to obtain the sounds and atmospheres I've been wanting.

    Thank you for this. It will be a regular element in most (if not all) of my music moving forward.

    S12 December 2024
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