OT: Kill switch for el guitar - design ideas?

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

Hi gang,

Since there are many guitar and audio wiring wizards on this list I'd
like to ask for ideas on kill switch playing. Back in the days it was
a trick that you did with a Les Paul by turning down the neck pickup's
volume knob, hit a chord and work the toggle switch to stutter it. In
recent years Tom Morello has popularized the effect and developed it
into DJ style "scratching" almost made his trademark sound. Now, I'm
thinking about this in terms of musical playability and the best
solution I can imagine would be a touch pad, or button, big enough for
you to "drum on" with the finger tips of your right hand (while
providing "source noise" with your left hand on the fretboard). I have
not seen anyone using such a guitar solutions but since the idea is so
great I bet there are lots of people out there playing with it? Maybe
even on this list?

Scott Middelton of Cancer Bats has a kill switch in his custom built
guitar, seen as picture 3 here: http://is.gd/thSM. But that solution
is sort of functionality-wise upside down as I see it. It kills the
audio when pressed - I would rather have a kill switch that lets
through audio when pressed. That's the only way to go if you want to
drum it by finger tips. And this rises an issue: Since the default
position would be to block audio you would also need a second button
for enabling the kill switch. Any design ideas for this?

The only thing I can come up with is a toggle press button to
enable/disable the touch pad. The moment you enable it, the audio is
silenced and you can now open up the signal flow by tapping the touch
pad. In active mode this button works the other way, it disables the
touch pad and puts the audio flow back into normal. You would of
course have to hit the enable button with a musical timing.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com