I once heard a recording (amateur) of a guy making his guitar sound like bagpipes. It may have had a fuzz box sort of sound but it was that long ago I can't be sure. Any suggestions as to how to go about getting this sort of sound?

Hi Steve.
Bagpipes huh? Next they'll be makin' a banjo sound for guitars.
The best thing I can tell ya to do is to go to your favorite guitar shop and talk to them about it. The guy/gal in the pedal department will know a lot more about all of the products on the shelf than most people here. It's their line of work. Know what I mean?
Good luck, and when you find that pedal, post it here. I just might wanna put my kilt on and march around the lounge this thursday night.

ok, im a huge rage against the machine fan and i knwo all tom morrelo's tricks and this is one. The song you heard was probably "voice of the voiceless" off the battle of los Angeles album, track nine.
fist, get yourself a Digitech Whammy pedal, any version will do, but i like the whammy 2, the same one that tom morrello has,(theres not that much difference between them so it doesnt matter)
second, get a little familiar with the pedal, mess with the expression pedal and the selector knob.

finaly, turn on the Whammy Pedal, play one note and keep it continuouse, play quarternotes or somethign, i like to play an open G. manipulate the knob keeping it in the harmonizer section of the pedal's range. if that dont give you the sound ya want then you are a lost cause my friend

hope that solved it!

Not to get too far off subject, but they actually make a guitar called a "GANJO" now. Dixie Chicks use one quite a bit...it's a guitar with a banjo head...so it's played just like a regular 6 string to get the banjo sound. Go figure.

It was inevitable really though, wasn't it? A Ganjo?...Ah well.
As for bagpipes, I want that sound too! I've done a little bit of experimenting, but not really managed anything too useful yet. Having listened to several real bagpipe tracks I've realised how hard it is to recreate that droaning sound (there's a constant note). If you find anything that's remotely close let me know, still very keen to learn this.
In the mean time I'll keep playing "Scotland The Brave" with my distorted sound. Hehe.

The sound I heard was on a home-made tape recording of a few guys jamming in a bedromm and this must have been at least 20 years ago. The drone of the bagpipe wasn't there but the actual sound was kind of like a fuzz-box type tone. It certainly wasn't done with anything compliated as whammy pedals etc didn't exist then. Keep tryin' guys!

talking of weird sound fx, i have been trying for ages to get a harpsichord sound on my guitar. hendrix uses on "burnin' of the midnight lamp" and i would love to play it on-stage. my band has 2 guitarists so i would take care of the weird sound and my mate would do the distorted guitar doubling the line. any advice would be usefull, i am compleatly stuck

What about that weird gadget called the 'eBow' (i think?)
If you used distortion and held notes similar to a bagpipe you could get something pretty close.
p.s. there had to have been wah pedals 20 years ago.. mine's at least from the early 70's. (Mister Cry Baby)
I even remember reading about the eBow back when I started playing and that had to have been the early 70's.

2 popular songs with the bagpipe sound are AC/DC's "It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll" and Big Country's "In A Big Country"

Originally Posted by: jsepeta

2 popular songs with the bagpipe sound are AC/DC's "It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll" and Big Country's "In A Big Country"

Yes, and there is a lesson for "In a Big Country" here on GuitarTricks. In the Gear portion of the lesson, Mike Olekshy outlines a gear setup for getting the kind of bagpipe-like sounds used for the lead portions of that song, including a pitch shifter.

Wow... A 21 year old thread gets resurrected.