electrifying guitar solo for yacht rock enthusiast

July 5, 2015 10:28 PM

I'm working on a performance at the moment that occurs on a slip way, during the performance I would like to pull an electric guitar out of the ocean and play an epic solo on the guitar that will still be dripping wet. - the guitar will be plugged directly into a sound card - do i need to water proof the guitar? - any ideas on how to do that?
posted by frequently to Media & Arts (29 answers total)

The guitarist in me winces at this idea... but, ok, I wonder if you could coat it with a hydrophobic coating like Neverwet, and ... would that work? I dunno. Even if it did, you mentioned the guitar being "dripping wet", which, if coated in neverwet, it probably wouldn't be dripping as it would probably come out of the ocean essentially dry.
posted by smcameron at 11:23 PM on July 5, 2015

You want to put an electrical appliance in salt water? Sounds kind of crazy. I'd think at the least, you're going to short the wiring in the pickups and knobs and get really crappy crackling or no sound, but I'm just guessing.

Smearing dielectric grease on all the electrical parts might help, but I'd trust that more with inadvertent splashing more than actual submergence.

I guess you're not worried about getting the guitar wet, and you can always replace the electrical parts. So, one way to find out. Try it now?
posted by ctmf at 12:12 AM on July 6, 2015

Dude. What you're describing could destroy the guitar or electrocute you. How could you even test it without potentially ruining your instrument or dying? Seriously, play a recording of the solo and then mime along to it with a wet, unplugged guitar.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 12:29 AM on July 6, 2015

Actually connecting the guitar to anything powered, via a wire, seems to me like you're courting becoming the next Keith Relf. Can you use a wireless system instead? That seemed to be the trick for these guys. You could maybe try and seal off the pickups, plugs, and back with a clear adhesive film like Tegaderm you could take off quickly without being noticed much (in addition to the dielectric grease on parts), but I have no idea if that would actually keep anything dry. This guide to shock hazards for musicians might also be useful.
posted by hackwolf at 1:19 AM on July 6, 2015

going wireless seems like a good option, thanks @hackwolf
posted by frequently at 1:38 AM on July 6, 2015

You are not likely to be electrocuted - that tends to be caused by a malfunctioning amplifier and shouldn't be affected by a short circuit in the guitar.

That said, the technician in me puts the likelihood of the guitar functioning at about 0.001% (halve this for salt water). You're putting a conductor in every part of an electric guitar - even if you try and seal it up it is still going to be drenched. Waterproofing is HARD. Just nup.
posted by deadwax at 3:52 AM on July 6, 2015

Is there a reason you can't pre-record the solo, and put a dead, defunct, un-wired guitar into the water?
posted by DarlingBri at 4:01 AM on July 6, 2015

i could pre-record the solo, but i think it would be more bad ass if its live
posted by frequently at 4:03 AM on July 6, 2015

Setting aside the electrical problems, I don't know how bad-ass the solo will sound if the strings and fretboard are soaking wet. I would imagine the water would cause unpredictable string damping (pardon the expression) and flattened notes.
posted by ardgedee at 4:59 AM on July 6, 2015

Putting a guitar in salt water will severely corrode any metal on it. The strings, the tuning pegs, the bridge - everything. Guitars are not watertight, so that includes the truss rod. Also, wood swells and warps when wet, particularly wood like the neck of a guitar that has a constant force applied to it. Any instrument you deliberately put into salt water should be an instrument you do not ever want to play again. Any length of time in water, particularly salt water, will permanently and seriously damage any guitar.

Additionally, having the strings be 'dripping wet' will almost certainly affect the tone and playability. It'll go out of tune very quickly, and even if you manage to pull it out still in tune, it'll have a very muted tone as the water on the strings deadens vibration.

Finally, even if you do manage to waterproof all the electrics, you'll need to somehow also protect the output jack so that water doesn't get in there. This is marginally more plausible if you're using a wireless setup so you don't need to plug anything in after you pull it out of the ocean, but waterproofing is REALLY HARD and requires lots of time and money for testing.

By far and away the easiest way to do this would be to pre-record and use a cheap guitar you don't care about to mime along. Like, I can't emphasise how much easier that would be than doing it live. Thousands of dollars and dozens of hours easier, with the added bonus that it's much, much less likely to fail in the moment. It's less bad-ass, but, well, there's a history of using staging for spectacle in rock. You'll be the only one that knows.
posted by spielzebub at 5:02 AM on July 6, 2015

There is a brand of all-composite-materials guitar (carbon fiber and such). I don't think they make an electric, but they look pretty boss... I was thinking of the Rainsong, but I see that Ovation (long an innovator in this field) may have an electric for a good bit less. I still don't think I'd dip it in salt water, but...
posted by cleroy at 5:44 AM on July 6, 2015

How about if you wrapped the guitar in plastic, decorated such that it appears to be swaddled in seaweed? Green garbage bags might work well for this purpose.
posted by rodlymight at 5:50 AM on July 6, 2015

i could pre-record the solo, but i think it would be more bad ass if its live

I think it would be more badass if you're still alive. Even if you were an expert at electrical waterproofing, it sounds dangerous. There's a reason you've never seen this stunt before. The guy who put a fireworks on his head thought it a great idea, too...

Don't do this.
posted by inturnaround at 6:22 AM on July 6, 2015

I think the main danger is that you will come out of the water with a dripping wet guitar and then no sound/terrible sounds will come out of it, which will be less bad ass. Also this will destroy the guitar, so 1) every trial you do will cost you a guitar, and 2) you won't be able to do a dry (ha) run with the actual guitar you're going to use for the performance, because it would likely be destroyed.

Here's my rec: waterproof a cheap guitar as well as you can, as advised above, prerecord the solo, and have a really great sound guy so that if the noises coming out of the live guitar sound OK you can go with that and if they don't you can go with the recording.
posted by mskyle at 6:40 AM on July 6, 2015

It may not be as bad ass, but could you put the guitar in a waterproof case and pull that out of the water?
posted by Broken Ankle at 7:03 AM on July 6, 2015

It is pretty badass. it would be even more badass if you got a bearded merman hand you the guitar after he came out of the deep riding a giant seahorse...

I think wireless is the way to go. As far as the saltwater? Pfft, its not like the guitar will disintegrate in moments. Just pick up a cheap used guitar. It will likely be the coolest thing that cheap guitar ever did!
posted by ian1977 at 7:30 AM on July 6, 2015

I'm more curious what sort of effect you're hoping the audience to see. The first images that pop to my mind are along the lines of this, which obviously isn't doable. What seems most likely is they see you reaching somewhere they can't see and rummaging around a while and then fumbling back to your feet with a guitar that, oh, looks wet, did he just pull that out of the water? Which, I don't know, might still be cool.

But I'd be inclined to take a step back and make the question "I'm performing next to water, what's some way I could take advantage of that?", and maybe there's something equally creative that has more audience impact for the effort.
posted by bfields at 7:42 AM on July 6, 2015

Ooo! What about a 'treasure chest' that is pulled out of the water with a guitar inside. You could still have it covered in seaweed or something to make it look Neptunian.
posted by ian1977 at 7:52 AM on July 6, 2015

If I wanted to waterproof a guitar, here's what I'd do: Remove the pickups, dip them in epoxy to seal them completely. Either bypass the volume and tone pots or replace them with water-resistant or waterproof models. Hard-wire the output cable. Coat all wiring, solder joints, etc in epoxy.

This only protects the electronics -- the wood and metal hardware would still be vulnerable to water damage, but probably wouldn't disintegrate immediately.

The people who think you're going to get electrocuted don't know what an electric guitar is or how it works. (Hint: it's not an "electrical appliance".) Don't plug into a broken tube amp or otherwise directly connect lethal voltage to your output jack, and you'll be fine.
posted by bradf at 8:21 AM on July 6, 2015

Let's think about how an electric guitar works.

There is a pickup which is essentially a magnet touching 6 magnetic rod of metal, the whole thing wrapped by a coil of wire. When you wiggle the metal strings over the rods, they induce/cause a current to flow through the coil which then goes off to the amp.

The good news is that the pickup can be waterproofed pretty easily, but you're going to ruin the guitar, so keep that in mind. You essentially want to seal the pickup and all the connection in in epoxy. What I would do is disconnect the volume and tone controls and disconnect and remove the input jack and run an instrument cable straight into the body through the hole where the jack was and seal everything up with epoxy.

The problem that I think you will encounter is grounding. You'll notice that there is a set of wires that connect from the input jack ground to the metal case of each knob and then to the bridge which in turn connects to the strings (see the black lines in this diagram). If the strings are not grounded, your guitar won't work (at least not especially well).

The problem I see is that you're going to have the guitar strings grounded to the ocean until you pull it out of the water and there will still be all kinds of dripping water interfering with that after. I can't see that working particularly well unless you have a waterproof switch interrupting the cable and then you're going to get a nice pop when you switch it on to play.

Also, most of any electric guitar is wood which floats. You are likely going to have to address that.

tl;dr - you're going to ruin the guitar, use a cheap one. Epoxy is your friend. Test thoroughly ahead of time. Be prepared to buy extra pickups.

On preview: same as bradf, but I wouldn't bother with the waterproof pots - fix that at the mixer.
posted by plinth at 8:36 AM on July 6, 2015

Hint: it's not an "electrical appliance"

Yes it is, in that electrical current is what makes it work. It may not be a shock hazard any more than falling in a lake with your iPhone, but it's probably not going to work in salt water. And spielzebub and ardgedee are right, even if it does, it's going to be single-use and probably not sound all that great anyway.

+10 for showmanship though. Maybe film a video of you doing it. Show the video of you pulling the guitar from the deep bad-assedly, then bring the lights up on yourself on stage with the same (but actually a different, not previously destroyed by salt water submergence) guitar to begin shredding.
posted by ctmf at 12:16 PM on July 6, 2015

I think the suggestion above has the best answer.

You need some way you can sleight-of-guitar this so you do pull a guitar out of the water, but actually end up playing an identical one that isn't totally wrecked by all of the things mentioned above. You really just need to give the illusion of playing the waterlogged guitar.

At least this way you're doing the solo live, which I agree is desirable, but a waterlogged guitar just isn't going to work, either at all, or for producing an acceptable solo.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 12:54 PM on July 6, 2015

Maybe you could ask this guy how he waterproofed his.
posted by bradf at 1:27 PM on July 6, 2015

I'm in the "don't even try to play a wet guitar" camp.

However, that doesn't mean you can't pull this off. Just employ some basic stage magic. Have two guitars that look exactly alike, pull the dummy out of the water, walk behind a large object to "plug it in" but instead quickly make the switch to a non-wet, plugged-in guitar.
posted by jeffamaphone at 4:33 PM on July 6, 2015

I think bfields makes a good point above - I dunno how bad-ass it'll be unless your audience can actually see you pull the guitar out of the water. I've certainly seen guys play guitar during/just after some rain, and it's . . . . . not very epic. Especially from more than about 10 or 20 feet away; you can't really tell that the guitar is wet. You might see some water dripping off the neck and headstock. (Which brings up the idea that if the set-up of the show is such that audience can't actually see your arm go into the water and emerge with a guitar, maybe you could fake it a little bit by having just the headstock and part of the neck submerged, so you still get some dripping without getting the electronics soaked.)

Re:safety; yes, wireless. The guitar itself doesn't, of course, have any dangerous voltage going through it, but eventually it's gotta be connected to an amplifier if you want anyone to hear it, and amps do have potentially lethal voltage inside. The GuitarNuts "shock hazard" article hackwolf linked to is entirely correct. Going wireless will eliminate a major path to ground through your body should something else in your system go awry.

Yes, you should do this with a cheap guitar, where you don't really care if it gets fucked up. These days there are some entirely playable ones available new for a couple hundred or less. A relatively short immersion isn't gonna make the wood or metal parts of the guitar disintegrate immediately, you should be able to get a solo out of it. Your main problem would be the pickups and wiring, where water shorts across two points, giving you no sound or intermittent sound.

For waterproofing, I like the idea of starting with simplifying the guitar immensely - keep only one pickup, get rid of all switches and pots, hardwire the pickup straight to the output jack. I think a Telecaster-style guitar would be a good candidate for this project - you can pretty cheaply buy pickguards with no cut-out for a front pickup and control plate panels with no holes. Then use some combo of epoxy/silicone/rubber (as suggested by others above) to seal gaps where water could get to electronics (like, take off the pickguard and run a bead of silicone caulk all around the edge, then screw the pickguard back onto the guitar, same with the bridge plate and the control panel, the holes in the back where the strings pass through the body, etc etc.)

The output jack's a bit of a stumper - maybe some kind of stretch wrap that you could easily pull off or poke through? (You can buy rolls of stretch wrap at big-box hardware stores.) Have the wireless plugged in and then seal the jack and plug with caulk, protect the small transmitter with a couple of condoms stretched over it? (This is an old guitar tech trick for players who get really sweaty when they play.)

One thing to keep in mind is that water is sneaky, and time and volume can have a big effect. When I do outside gigs and there's a little drizzle or a short cloudburst, I can just throw some 5 mil plastic tarps over things and it's fine. But the longer and/or harder it rains, the more likely that tarps will get soaked through, or water will wick into whatever available tiny gaps or pinholes there may be in the covering, and spread out on or into stuff. Which is to say that waterproofing a guitar enough so it can survive a couple of minutes of soaking may be one thing; waterproofing it enough so it can survive a couple of hours underwater may be quite another. So that would be another consideration for how you run your show - you might have better luck if you can have an accomplice sneak the guitar into the water at the beginning of the one song you're going to do this for, rather than have the guitar submerged before the audience even arrives.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:13 PM on July 6, 2015

thankyou for some very in depth and helpful answers, I very much appreciate the time and care that people have put into thinking about this.

just to round the picture out a bit,

the performance happens on the waters edge

I will be emerging from the ocean where I have been hiding under water with an oxygen tank

I will be walking out of the water holding the guitar

i'll play my solo

set the guitar on fire

and then walk back into the ocean sans guitar

i'm not overly concerned about playability...

these guys go wireless which seems like the easiest option

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/dragonforce-underwater-guitar-solo/
posted by frequently at 8:24 PM on July 6, 2015

You're going to set a soaking wet piece of wood on fire?
posted by ctmf at 1:00 AM on July 7, 2015

Please be careful setting anything on fire with an oxygen tank close by.
posted by sockermom at 12:42 PM on July 9, 2015

Please take a video of this event to either (a) prove us wrong, or (b) serve as a cautionary tale to future rock and rollers.
posted by jeffamaphone at 10:26 AM on July 15, 2015