Touch-Sensitive Trombone Wall Light

Touch your brass instrument to dim or turn on/off the light. This craft can be done in minutes and will give you hours of a soft golden light! (If done right - this won't hurt your trombone....)

• Trombone (no mouthpiece needed)
• 3-Way Touch Sensor Dimmer (cost $4-10)
• 15' Extension Cord
• 10" Electrical Wire Braided
• Pigtail Socket
• Light Bulb (Incandescent 40W or less)
• Wiring Caps
• Copper Pipe 1/2" Straps
• Electrical Tape

Warning: What you are about to create will have cables and connections with 120V electricity run through it. This lamp fixture won't be a toy to play with and is best fixed to a wall where nobody can pull on the cords, etc. Also - using a incandescent light bulb creates a lot of heat. If you end up using a light bulb with higher Watts you will have to figure out how to deal with the heat issue.

After you just finished reading the warning and still want to go ahead with this project - I recommend listening to some trombone music while you are working on it...

Let's get started: Cut off the female plug end of the extension cord. Feed the cord through the trombone - start at the mouthpiece end (you don't use a mouthpiece for this project).

Hint: Use a smaller wire first, attach the power cord to it and pull it through the instrument.

Strip the wires after you fed them all the way through to the bell of the trombone.

Depending on your 3 Way Touch Sensitive Dimmer (= controller)... there should be 4 wires.

1. Connect the hot wire from the extension cord to the controller
2. Connect the switched leg coming out of the controller to the pigtail black wire
3. The neutral of the extension cord, controller and pigtail are connected next
4. Now you should have the touch sensor wire remaining

To connect the touch sensor to the entire trombone body - use a 10" long braided wire. Strip one side 4" and fray it out. Connect the other side of the 10" wire to the touch sensor wire of the controller.

Use some electrical tape to make sure that the frays of the touch sensor wire will have contact with the body of the instrument on the inside when you pull the extension cord back into the body of the instrument.

Here is how you do it: pull on the extension cord from the mouthpiece side of the instrument to retract the controller and pigtail fully into the bell of the instrument.

You should be able to test your Trombone Light fixture now: Plug it in and touch it anywhere.

BTW - my controller works only with incandescent light bulbs.

I used copper pipe straps to mount it to the wall.

Enjoy!