Homemade piezo pickups?

[Oakbear]

I read an article somewhere about turning a piezo buzzer into a pickup by removing the casing and soldering into a jack output.
Seems too good to be true given they cost about a pound, and cheapo piezo sets are about £40!

But is it?
I'm an electrics newb, and can solder, wire a plug or a bass, but would this work? If not why not?
Any ways to improve the quality?
And would it be possible to wire several of these together to get a better output/signal from a bass?

Thanks in advance folks!

[EBS_freak]

[quote name='Oakbear' post='127068' date='Jan 24 2008, 04:57 PM']I read an article somewhere about turning a piezo buzzer into a pickup by removing the casing and soldering into a jack output.
Seems too good to be true given they cost about a pound, and cheapo piezo sets are about £40!

But is it?
I'm an electrics newb, and can solder, wire a plug or a bass, but would this work? If not why not?
Any ways to improve the quality?
And would it be possible to wire several of these together to get a better output/signal from a bass?

Thanks in advance folks![/quote]

You can get them without the casing. I think Maplins may have them.

Anyway, the easiest way of doing this is get a bottle top (yup, off your favourite bear), get a piezo that fits in it. Solder a cable with a jack socket on the piezo. Put in a bit of epoxy resin into the bottle top. Stick in the piezo, put a bit more epoxy resin in.

Now you can stick your new pickup anywhere... (bit of masking tape is all you need). Sounds great on violin etc. Total build price... if you source your parts correctly, less than 2 quid.

[Lfalex v1.1]

I'm no expert, but Piezos require contact with the string. That means integrating them into the bridge saddles (as per implementations used by Fender, Ibanez, Musicman, Warwick etc) OR attaching them to the bridge/ top of acoustic instruments (Just about all electroacoustic instruments!)
Even if you have the engineering capabilities, I would still doubt that the elements and crystals in a cheapo buzzer would be as good as or have the right frequency response for this application.

What instrument did you have in mind for this mod?

Lots of basses with Magnetic pick-ups AND piezos just use the piezos for a bit more bite, and couple them to passive tone controls.
(Electro)Acoustics often have only the piezo, and this is a full-range (frequency-wise) system usually coupled a pre-amp to give more tonal control.

Check out;

Ovation
Status (Electro model)
Musicman Stingray (W/Piezo!)
Fender Power Jazz Basses
Ibanez EDA 900 / 905 (now discontinued)

[Oakbear]

Thanks very much for the replies folks!

I'm thinking of attempting a fretless 6 self build soon (possibly semi-hollowbody), and had considered either a piezo system or a dual magnetic and piezo combo.
I like the idea of an extra bite or ambient resonance for that upright sound.
Now i'm taking my time on this one, but am aiming for making as much of it myself as possible, for as little as possible

Purely for aethetics i also really fancy the idea of a smooth top with no pickups visible!

On paper piezos (even the cheap buzzers) have a great frequecy reponse. I like the sound on cellos or uprights, but have only heard it on an acoustic bass, and then through a preamp.

Any more recommendations?

[steve]

[quote name='EBS_freak' post='127090' date='Jan 24 2008, 05:08 PM']Anyway, the easiest way of doing this is get a bottle top (yup, off your favourite bear), get a piezo that fits in it. Solder a cable with a jack socket on the piezo. Put in a bit of epoxy resin into the bottle top. Stick in the piezo, put a bit more epoxy resin in.

Now you can stick your new pickup anywhere... (bit of masking tape is all you need). Sounds great on violin etc. Total build price... if you source your parts correctly, less than 2 quid.[/quote]

My vocalist used to have a commercially available one of these that he used to attach to the bridge of an acoustic guitar using blu-tac. Worked ok, but i found the piezos weren't as sensitive to the bass frequencies, so you might need some kind of mag pickup to boost the bottom end

[bnt]

Maplin used to sell piezo cable too, perhaps it still does? You'd just cut to size and wire up one end to a preamp.

Reminds me: I had a play with [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect"]Hall Effect[/url] devices, which Maplin sold back then. I wonder if I should have a go again?

[Mr. Foxen]

A fairly regular poster has a avatar of three Maplins type piezo elements stuck to the top of a bass to go under the bridge, I pm'd and asked about it, but he said it picked up all the noise made by your clothes rubbing against the bass and such, so didn't work out that great.

[Oakbear]

Thanks again!

Those piezos, were they on the bass or in it under the bridge?

I've been drawing out plans tonight, and it's going to be pretty if it works out!

[EBS_freak]

[Mr. Foxen]

Pbassred

QUOTE
Is that 3 piezo transducter type things being put under a bridge? Did you do this? I saw them in maplins and was considering it, can you tell me how it went?


It was rubbish! The yamaha has the electronics on board to amplify it (if you enable it). The tone was good. Unfortunatly it picked up all of the vibration of the bass - finger noise neck, rubbing against the body.... everything.
It really needs a proper saddle pickup.

[bnt]

Well, Michael Manring's Hyperbass has piezos in the body, so he can do percussive effects etc. I wouldn't expect a clean tone from a piezo mounted on a solid body anyway - only in direct contact with the string, as already noted.

[Lfalex v1.1]

[quote name='Oakbear' post='127113' date='Jan 24 2008, 05:30 PM']Thanks very much for the replies folks!

I'm thinking of attempting a fretless 6 self build soon (possibly semi-hollowbody), and had considered either a piezo system or a dual magnetic and piezo combo.
I like the idea of an extra bite or ambient resonance for that upright sound.
Now i'm taking my time on this one, but am aiming for making as much of it myself as possible, for as little as possible

Purely for aethetics i also really fancy the idea of a smooth top with no pickups visible!

On paper piezos (even the cheap buzzers) have a great frequecy reponse. I like the sound on cellos or uprights, but have only heard it on an acoustic bass, and then through a preamp.

Any more recommendations?[/quote]

Hmmmm.
Just a thought;
On a Semi hollow, perhaps having a thin front face of good quality timber (Spruce? Maple?) with a chambered body beneath. leave the area under the strings free of internal obstructions, and fit however many piezo elements you fancy under the "top" by bonding them there. Allow acces from the rear for maintenance/ further mods
Leave a solid chunk of wood for the bridge to screw into (assuming you use a clunky metal one, not a nylon piezo "bar")

Presto! There's your smooth top, at least!

[dr.funk]

Hmm there was some good info about this on talkbass, I will try and find it when I have a minute. The biggest challenge seemed to be to build the preamplifier for the piezo crystals.

[Oakbear]

Here's a link to Maplins
[url="http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=3202&C=Maplin&U=SearchTop&T=piezo&doy=25m1"]http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Module...zo&doy=25m1[/url]

From reading around the net it seems that mounting and position are imperative.
I've seen success from folks who have taken a unit which sounded bad and mounted it in cork or clay. It makes sense to cut down noise, and sounds excellent in their reports. It seems a shame to lose the sound of the wood a bit though.
I guess it's a trade off for cutting finger noise etc.

My original plan was to mount maybe 3 of these into the bottom of an ebony bridge which i'll carve (a base unit, with slides carved out for ebony saddles, held in by string pressure. Anchoring either through or on the body in keepers). I'm now thinking of doing this with thickish cork on the bottom and side of the piezos to lose unwanted noise.
Would that kill any desireable sound from the body though?

Lfalex, i also like the idea of the piezo on a thin top, like an acoustic.
From what i've heard here it seems that might pick up a bit of noise, but acoustic basses are mounted like that, and there's not too much click with ones i've played....

Is some of this a preamp issue? No preamp =tons of noise?

[Oakbear]

Ok, another question....

How does the resonant frequency of the piezo effect the sound picked up?

There seems to be a range of different hz, from about 1khz-40khz....

[Dood]

Guys.. you'll love this.... in an emergency, I once recorded acoustic guitar using....... the cartridge and styles from a turntable!!

You have to get the stylus to rest gently on the bridge, unhindered by the cartridge (in the same way that it does on a record.) Depending on where you sit it, you'll have a multitude of different tones available. I found that the treble side of the bridge was good.

The only downside to a great guitar tone, was that the pickup will pick up every tap and scrape from the top of the guitar. - The cartridge was a pretty good one too ;o) - You don't need an RIAA phono preamp or anything, but a channel strip will do fine to get the gain up.

[Lfalex v1.1]

[quote name='dood' post='127630' date='Jan 25 2008, 11:25 AM']Guys.. you'll love this.... in an emergency, I once recorded acoustic guitar using....... the cartridge and styles from a turntable!!

You have to get the stylus to rest gently on the bridge, unhindered by the cartridge (in the same way that it does on a record.) Depending on where you sit it, you'll have a multitude of different tones available. I found that the treble side of the bridge was good.

The only downside to a great guitar tone, was that the pickup will pick up every tap and scrape from the top of the guitar. - The cartridge was a pretty good one too ;o) - You don't need an RIAA phono preamp or anything, but a channel strip will do fine to get the gain up.[/quote]

In fact, I once amplified my Westone through a phono stage on a hifi amp. The RIAA eq doesn't help much (!)

Oakbear, I reckon the reason EUBs are less susceptible to noise from "contact" is the fact that the piezos are under the bridge, and get a good signal to "contact noise" ratio.
Also, the EUB is mechanically earthed through its spike or endpin, which may be helping.

[tauzero]

Another approach to this particular application is to use Variax piezo pickup saddles. I got some guitar ones pretty cheaply off That Ebay, and one of these days I'll work out a way of fitting them.

I keep meaning to get round to experimenting with a couple of piezo buzzers I bought ages ago. I shall have to dig them out. The only thing is that I think they'd suffer from being placed under adjustable bridge saddles, as the height screws would exert a lot of pressure over a small area. Perhaps they could be shimmed with some thin metal, eg. off a tin can.

You can knock up a simple buffer preamp circuit to sort out the impedance issue - the [url="http://www.scotthelmke.com/Mint-box-buffer.html"]mint box preamp[/url] is one example, and it's difficult to get more simple than that. Alternatively, Behringer's cheapo ADI21 DI box has a high input impedance.