Suspended tone rings!
Wait! What?
You know - ball bearings supporting a tone ring. Gibson is famous for it - and a few other things.
I started an experiment a couple of years ago that recently ended with ball bearings. I cut scallops out of a block rim and sat a rolled brass rod ring on top of it. Sounded pretty good to me.
Then I took some large headed nails, cut the shafts short, and stuck them into holes drilled in the top of the rim. And, BAM!! It kicked the sound up a notch or two. It was louder and brighter by a good bit from just the rolled brass ring.
Next, a couple of months ago, I used round headed screws under a rolled brass tone ring and the sound was pretty much the same - loud and bright. Much better than just the rod ring.
The last part of this experiment started when I went to one of my favorite stores - The Axeman surplus stores in the Minneapolis area. I think there are two or three of them. They had various sizes of steel ball bearings for a couple of bucks a pound. You get a lot of 7/16 ball bearings in a pound.
I took a reject rim and drilled shallow holes in the top - about a 1/16 in. deep.
It takes a bit of finger dexterity to get the whole thing together. I had to put a drop of glue in each hole to keep the balls from squirting out when the head put pressure on the rolled ring. Maybe the holes should have been deeper. But the effort was worth it.
I mounted a temporary neck on the rim. (Everybody has a reject rim and a temporary neck sitting around, right?)
And it sounds as good to me as a white lady tone ring.
So, the moral of this tale is that if you're looking for expensive tone ring sound from an inexpensive rolled brass ring, hit your ball bearing dealer or steal one of your neighbors wheel bearings.
I'll try to do a sound sample soon.