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Glidetone inventions come from a passion for musical instruments and electronics. We love to invent things that lend to the creation of great sound and live performances. Basically the gear we want to play with. We are inspred by classic inventions and obsessed with how we can push them forward without losing their simplicity.


Glidetone Sliding Pickup System - Re-imagining electric guitar and bass.

Get a multitude of new tones at your fingertips. Not only do the sliding pickups get you infinite tonal variations but the three push button switches provide five distinct tone sets; Single Coil, Parallel Humbucking, Series Humbucking, Parallel Phased, and Series Phased.


Take your electric guitar or bass sound from a bridge humbucker to a single coil neck - and everything in between.


Glidetone Pickups Closeup


Glidetone Tube Amplifier Project - Totally customizable tube amp project that is built for flexibility.

Cakepan Amp

We don't think it's too much to ask for a tube amplifier to have all the following features...

• Two channels with GAIN, TREBLE, BASS and LEVEL control.
• DC Coupled Cathode Follower gain section for sweet cleans to full tube crunch.
• Very quiet channel switching crucial for live performance.
• Two analog reverbs with LEVEL and DECAY with Tails-Mute control.
• Two speaker output jacks.
• Selectable 4,8,16 ohm speaker output.
• Power amp section can be switched between fixed or cathode bias.
• Footswitch control for channel switching, both reverbs, and lead boost.
• Master volume control that also doubles as LEAD BOOST control.
• Dry signal path is 100% tube driven, no op-amps or digitizers.
• Post-overdrive pre-reverb effects loop.
• Option for external bias test point.
• Extra outlet on the back.

Expand your tonal dimensions with Glidetone sliding pickups

There are so many great playing electric guitars, but it's a shame that their tonal range is limited by their pickups being in fixed positions. Imagine if you could move your pickups to capture all the different harmonics available along your strings.


Enter the Glidetone sliding pickup system, which allows you to slide and rotate your pickups to multitudes of positions between the neck and bridge of your guitar. Take your guitar and bass tones to new places.
Glidetone sliding pickup patent

There are five color tracks to choose from...
• Antique Gold
• Silver
• Black
• Red
• Blue



glidetone color tracks


One advantage to having only two single coil sliding pickups is the reduced magnetic pull on the strings as opposed to three single coil pickups or two humbuckers with four total coils. Reduced magnet pull on the strings may result in better sustain.

The other advantage to having two single coil sliding pickups is diverse switching options you can get with fairly simple wiring. With two DPDT (double-pole double-throw) or a single Fender 4-position Telecaster switch you can get single, parallel, and series coil configurations.

Adding one more DPDT switch to switch the polarity of one of the pickups will provide additional parallel-phased and series-phased configurations. The schematics below show how these wiring configurations are done. There are three wiring options shown for the Fender 4-position Telecaster Pickup Selector Switch.



Glidetone Pickups Closeup
glidetone wiring schematic
DPDT wiring schematic

Fender 4-position Telecaster Pickup Selector Switch

Fender 4-position switch wiring schematic

Glidetone "Cakepan" tube amplifier

We've had lots of fun developing our Cakepan tube amplifier kit. Originally developed for electric guitar, this amplifier packs loads of features into a small but robust package. With the right customizations this amp works great for bass, harmonica, and other electric instruments as well.

So if you ever wanted to build a great sounding tube amp then head over to our Products page for more info.
Before you start building your own amp though, you should check out the Valve Wizard page for loads of great info about how to design and build tube amplifiers.

Cakepan Cabinet Parts
Cakepan Amp Cabinet Parts
Cakepan Schematic
Cakepan Amp Schematic
Cakepan PCB
Cakepan Amp PCB

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Glidetone track with slide-swivels

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Glidetone sliding pickup track with two pickup slides $175

Quantity




Some of our Glidetone creations:

Indio Classic with Glidetone Retrofit

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Indio Classic with Glidetone Retrofit

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Indio Cali Classic guitar retrofit with Glidetone sliding pickups
• Two single coil pickups. (8K Neck) (9K Bridge)
• Custom pickguard
• Gotoh 15:1 machine heads tuners
• Controls and pickup cavity fully copper shielded
• Push-on/off volume control switch enables pickup phase
• Four position pickup switch
  1 Neck
  2 Neck+Bridge Parallel
  3 Bridge
  4 Neck+Bridge Series
First Act with Glidetone Retrofit

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First Act with Glidetone Retrofit

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First Act Overtone guitar retrofit with Glidetone sliding pickups
• Two single coil pickups (8K Neck) (9K Bridge)
• Custom pickguard
• Controls and pickup cavity fully copper shielded
• Push-on/off tone control for standard tone or variable treble bleed control
• Push-on/Push-off volume control switch enables pickup phase
• Two push-button pickup switches
  0-0 Neck+Bridge Parallel
  1-0 Neck
  0-1 Bridge
  1-1 Neck+Bridge Series
First Act with Glidetone Retrofit

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First Act with Glidetone Retrofit

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Ibanez GSR100 bass retrofit with Glidetone sliding pickups
• Two Seymour Duncan single coil pickups
• Controls and pickup cavity fully copper shielded
• Three push-button pickup switches
  0-0-0 Neck+Bridge Parallel
  0-0-1 Neck+Bridge Parallel Phased
  1-0-X Neck
  0-1-X Bridge
  1-1-0 Neck+Bridge Series
  1-1-1 Neck+Bridge Series Phased


Glidetone™ brought to you by Heliotrack, LLC