Piezo pickups

[swarfrat]

I just wanted to put this out there.

Piezo's are not just for fauxoustic guitars and MIDI controllers. I have to say that I actually LOVE the Ghost saddles / Acoustiphonic into a medium gain amp cranked. It absolutely rocks, and it's totally buzz free. (It has other noise modes - like bumps, thuds, and I had to dampen the strings behind the nut and the tremolo springs for my own tastes, YMMV)

It's kinda tight and crunchy, makes a really nice rhythm drive crunch. You probably want to use the 'dark' switch (as luck would have it, I actually wired mine so that 'dark' is pushed in, and 'normal' is pulled up.  It's absolutely imperitive though that you use the correct dampening material. I used a hand selected, period correct vintage 80's sock tie, woven in between the strings on the headstock, and wrapped around the tremolo springs. I used a burgundy one that I had on hand, as it didn't draw attention to itself on the Wenge background.

Try it. You may like it. If you ever find yourself dealing with a recalcitrant Neon sign, it might even be a life saver.

 

[swarfrat]

One trick which does NOT work with piezos, is tremolo flutter. The Wilky is too low mass, and I have mine barely barely floating - just enough so that letting go of the trem doesn't BUMP on the piezo channel (and for exactly that reason). But if you smack the bar to let it flutter, the piezos will overload with low frequency mush until the flutter dampens out.

So if you want to set up a piezo only shredder, I'd recommend putting a HPF and setting it pretty high - like 60Hz or so - you won't lose too much of your dive bombs. A mid boost might be handy too in such a guitar. If you like Humbucker from Hell, Air anything, Stag Mag, or single coils - you might want to try piezos on your next guitar.

 

[greywolf]

I'm putting the Ghost system on a bass I'm building , as the client plays in both bluegrass and rock bands .

 

[DustyCat]

Has anybody here seen or heard the nylon strat? I hope that thing sounds as awesome as it looks!

I would also be intetrested in hearing clips (both clean and mild overdriven) of the Ghost Saddles Acoustiphonic piezo pickup. I can't believe something that stealthy could possibly sound as good as it looks :icon_tongue:

-DC

 

[swarfrat]

Bumping my old thread because...

Piezos instead of mags was fun for a while, before the novelty wore off. But...

Yank those SPROIINGS out of there, block the trem. Flip it back over, crank the mags, crank the volume, now add the piezos back in. Yowza. I'm thinking there needs to be a new preamp option for piezos. The coolest aspect of the piezos is actually that you can blend in some liveliness at lower volumes. Chunk and thunk. It's kind of a shame that it's voiced for fauxcoustic. Give it a nice lower mid bump 'cabinet thunk' voicing and you got yerself a live wire at very reasonable volumes, but it's already very usable as is.

Prior to this, I had been planning to yank the piezos off the 1/4 output entirely.

 

[DustyCat]

Nice!

Wish I knew more about this kind of mumbo jumbo!

 

[swarfrat]

Of course the curse of electric guitar is more is better! So i can't wait to get it cranked up for real.  I blocked it with some mahogany wedges i made.

I was surprised but my Sparkfun soldering iron was actually able to get hot enough to solder the ground wire into one of the spring hook holes (after scraping the black oxide off) rather than take 2 weeks to get the whole block, strings and tuners up to soldering temp). It appears to be a good joint but i'm always suspicious with large mass dissimilarities. I stuffed enough wire down in the hole that i hope it would get a good connection mechanically even if did get a cold solder joint.