lemmywinks Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Hi I'd like to add a piezo bridge to my bitsa fretless. It's a J type with an active circuit I'm assuming that after drilling the hole from the bridge to the control cavity it would be a simple matter of fitting a blend pot and attaching the wires from the different pickups to this, possibly including a volume pot for the piezo. Please pardon my ignorance (i'll be getting a hired lackey to do all this btw so i don't destroy my bass) but would i be able to take the signal from the piezo through the blend pot and then to the active circuit? Or would the piezo signal have to be independent of this? Cheers for any help Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ziggydolphinboy Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 [quote name='lemmywinks' post='537662' date='Jul 11 2009, 12:39 AM']Hi I'd like to add a piezo bridge to my bitsa fretless. It's a J type with an active circuit I'm assuming that after drilling the hole from the bridge to the control cavity it would be a simple matter of fitting a blend pot and attaching the wires from the different pickups to this, possibly including a volume pot for the piezo. Please pardon my ignorance (i'll be getting a hired lackey to do all this btw so i don't destroy my bass) but would i be able to take the signal from the piezo through the blend pot and then to the active circuit? Or would the piezo signal have to be independent of this? Cheers for any help Steve[/quote] on my warwick the peizo control is separate , i asked the gallery about putting a peizo on my thumb bass but they reckond it would be around 400 quid beacause of the routing!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Firstly you'd need to have a buffer preamp between your piezos and the eq. so the impedance is sorted. Secondly, make sure the piezos are big enough to detect bass strings (ie. fat contact points that won't slip between the windings on bass strings) Thirdly, piezos add a sound that can only be described as being similar to an amplified acoustic guitar (ie pretty hifi and flat but not very aggressive). They'll be hard to hear in a rock context but in a trio might be worth using. RMC are good. Maybe start there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Owen Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 I have been thinking about the piezo thing a lot recently. I have a bass with a full Fishman setup on it (individual saddles/elements, on board preamp with individual volume pots and a bit of bass EQ) and was thinking about replicating it on something else and then I realised that the main instrument I use a Piezo on (Double Bass) has one element and manages to produce the whole range nicely. I have since bought a £4.99 element with a jack socket on it and intend to mount this in a rough and ready stylee under a bridge and put it into a decent pre-amp to buffer it properly. The Piezo is sitting on my desk and will not happen for at least 4 weeks, but I see no reason why it should not give a decent sound. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemmywinks Posted July 15, 2009 Author Share Posted July 15, 2009 Cheers for the replies guys! The Piezo i bought was a whole bridge assembly. This one: [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=140331641705"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...em=140331641705[/url] I was originally going to fit it to my bitsa fretless. However i scored this on eBay last night: [url="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280371811021"]http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...em=280371811021[/url] So i'm thinking of putting the piezo bridge and fretless neck on that body. As it turns out i patched things up with an estranged friend at my last gig. Conveniently his dad is brilliant at this sort of thing, makes guitars and basses and is always up for trying out new ideas regarding electrics and construction, so i may have a decent guy to do the hard work for me I think the active circuit in my other fretless looks like causing more problems than it's worth. Would i be able to get away with just maybe a volume pot for the piezo if it went in the passive jazz? Or would there be a big difference in output? Is there anyway to sort of bypass the buffer preamp, to make things a bit simpler? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiwi Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Thats a very interesting bridge. Looks remarkably similar to the spector bridges! If you do bypass the buffer preamp and take the signal from the piezos straight to the eq then you could end up with a very harsh and thin signal. Impedance matching is pretty much essential if you want to get the best from your piezos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemmywinks Posted July 15, 2009 Author Share Posted July 15, 2009 Aye it's quite well made, came the next day too! What does a buffer pre involve, is it like a seperate fully fledged pre amp or something simpler? Again i'm pretty ignorant about this sort of thing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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