DIY e-guitar - Part 5 - Piezo pickup
Looking around for good piezo pickups, there are only a handful of options (most suggestions say that for blending with the magnetic pickups a preamp for the piezo is recommended, which I can agree with, based on my testing)
* L&R Baggs piezo tune-o-matic (T-Bridge) with Control-X preamp
* Graphtech Ghost piezo tune-o-matic with Acoustiphonic preamp
* Schaller piezo tune-o-matic with a Bartolini preamp
These might be good, but they cost a bit too much, any of these costs just as much as the full guitar did up until now, so they are way too pricey, as I didn't want to double the cost for an experiment like this. Looking around on ebay I found another item from a couple of UK sellers, usually priced around 40$, so ordered it, and it just arrived today (after having some fun with GDPR+ebay shipping: Royal Mail sent it from UK via a carrier called GLS, but due to privacy concerns Royal Mail doesn't hand over the phone number I specified, only the address, so the carrier can't call me to confirm that I can accept the package - called several times until I managed to discuss with the carrier to meet).
An additional item I found interesting from the same seller who had the piezo is a 5-way rotary switch, used for PRS-style wiring, which might come in handy for the 3-pickup modes switching, if the volume control per pickup + master tone control will not be enough of possible tones. The 5 modes I've been thinking are (bridge pickup + piezo, neck pickup + piezo, magnetic only, piezo only, both magnetic+piezo) That's what you can see where the 3-way toggle should be, with one of the tone knobs mounted on it (leaving the tone pot revealed).
For a quick test I wired in the piezo in place of (well, actually in series with) the neck pickup, which I unmounted to be able to access the 3-way toggle and the pickup wirings.
And the piezo does work indeed very well (probably not as fine as the more expensive ones, but good for the value), blends fairly well with the bridge pickup, but the volume is low, and is a bit harsh at higher volumes set on the amp. So, it's a fact that I need a preamp for it. Looking around on forums I saw several suggestions to simply box an acoustic guitar preamp from ebay, and use that externally, and other fixes. But why not have it built-in? So, an ebay search pointed me to analogworkshop, seemingly the page of a hobby electronist who built a couple of different preamp models, eventually adjusted for piezo pickups (page is in Polish, but google translate works well), asked some questions, received timely answer with some suggestions on which one to use, so I will most probably order a G-201 preamp from this guy, which is a miniature JFET active preamp powered by a 9V battery, no switch, no pot, just the preamp with some fixed gain. The price is really accessible 6 GBP (<8 USD)+ plus 5 GBP shipping.
* L&R Baggs piezo tune-o-matic (T-Bridge) with Control-X preamp
* Graphtech Ghost piezo tune-o-matic with Acoustiphonic preamp
* Schaller piezo tune-o-matic with a Bartolini preamp
These might be good, but they cost a bit too much, any of these costs just as much as the full guitar did up until now, so they are way too pricey, as I didn't want to double the cost for an experiment like this. Looking around on ebay I found another item from a couple of UK sellers, usually priced around 40$, so ordered it, and it just arrived today (after having some fun with GDPR+ebay shipping: Royal Mail sent it from UK via a carrier called GLS, but due to privacy concerns Royal Mail doesn't hand over the phone number I specified, only the address, so the carrier can't call me to confirm that I can accept the package - called several times until I managed to discuss with the carrier to meet).
An additional item I found interesting from the same seller who had the piezo is a 5-way rotary switch, used for PRS-style wiring, which might come in handy for the 3-pickup modes switching, if the volume control per pickup + master tone control will not be enough of possible tones. The 5 modes I've been thinking are (bridge pickup + piezo, neck pickup + piezo, magnetic only, piezo only, both magnetic+piezo) That's what you can see where the 3-way toggle should be, with one of the tone knobs mounted on it (leaving the tone pot revealed).
 |
| Piezo bridge wired in for testing in series with the unmounted neck pickup |
And the piezo does work indeed very well (probably not as fine as the more expensive ones, but good for the value), blends fairly well with the bridge pickup, but the volume is low, and is a bit harsh at higher volumes set on the amp. So, it's a fact that I need a preamp for it. Looking around on forums I saw several suggestions to simply box an acoustic guitar preamp from ebay, and use that externally, and other fixes. But why not have it built-in? So, an ebay search pointed me to analogworkshop, seemingly the page of a hobby electronist who built a couple of different preamp models, eventually adjusted for piezo pickups (page is in Polish, but google translate works well), asked some questions, received timely answer with some suggestions on which one to use, so I will most probably order a G-201 preamp from this guy, which is a miniature JFET active preamp powered by a 9V battery, no switch, no pot, just the preamp with some fixed gain. The price is really accessible 6 GBP (<8 USD)+ plus 5 GBP shipping.
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