hi all
can I have your thoughts on this? Its about a twelve string Tanglewood Oddyssey (bought off here). Its a narrowbody with a bowlback. It had an Artec APC Pro with a [u][b]solid[/b][/u] PP607 piezo in the bridge, 75 mm saddle with symmetrical min height of 4mm and rises to 6mm high at the centre, Width is 3mm.
When I got it, the preamp didnt work, but since I had no need of it, I didnt pay too much attention. It sounds awesome acoustically.
Fast forward and I find tuning it a pain; I wanted an onboard preamp with a tuner so after much searching for a narrow preamp I finally found that a Fishman Presys + would fit with a little chopping of the cutout. It comes with a mesh style piezo.I kept this as A) its hard wired into the preamp the existing piezo had a 3.5mm jack on and I didnt want to chop and join.
Its fitted, it works and I threw the rubbish away, its was only when I went to retune it that I noticed the bass E strings were a bit low and buzzy,.
two reasons
1. The mesh squashes, in a way that the solid preamp didnt so the saddle sits a little lower.
2. There is less bulk (no solid right angle) where the wire passes though into the bridge and so the saddle "wobbles" on the bass E position and sits lower as it tips slightly under the tension.
I'm aware that the mesh style allows fuller contact between saddle and body and so has some advantages, Equally I need it to work.
My thoughts are
1. buy another a solid piezo and join it (I foolishly threw the existing one not realising they cost about £13
2. get a taller saddle(possibly a compensated one) and sand it down. Issues - 1) most of the claimed bone ones seem actually to be plastic 2) I might cock it up ( any tricks tha tI can pickup)
3. Prop the saddle up with some match sticks and sand those down
What do you recommend, folks ?