Consistent distortion from a piezo

[jgregpegleg]

I hope this is the appropriate forum to file this under. As long as I have played, I should be more savvy about electronics.

I have a Godin A4, fretless, with a piezo bridge p/u. I love the sound of the bass, but it has some problems that I cannot troubleshoot.

There are some spots on the bass that produce distortion and not typical fretless buzz. The open A when played slightly hard produces distortion in any cab I play it through. Same with a G on the E and a B/C on the A. I can play the low open E hard as possible without distortion as well as other open strings and lower and higher notes all over the bass.

The bass is about twice as loud as my ernie ball musicman. I do some percussive playing and the Godin clips the speakers. I do not play very loud, but do play from very soft to very hard. I have some K and K transducers I have been messing around with on the bass, but have yet to see if the distortion problems happen with them.

I am in the early stages of solving this but thought to put this out in this learned forum to see if there is any experience or ideas out there.

Thanks in advance.

[GeoffByrne]

I suspect this may be caused by the kind/type/uneven contact of the bridge onto the piezo transducer, but I have little experience here. Others (I hope) will know more than I.

[Turnaround]

You might want to get you fingerboard checked out to make sure there are no humps in it. I have the original Godin Acoustibass fretless and have had to dress the fingerboard twice in the last six years or so to deal with small humps that developed.

BTW, have you tried TI flats? I really much prefer them over the Chromes. But it's a question of personal preference I guess. Worth a shot if you haven't tried them though.

[bigd4207]

I have peizo's - monorail system, one of my strings distorted bad. I took apart the strings bridge and the ground wasn't conducting right. It was touching but I guess not good enough. I just put a little exposed wire on the end and viola, you might check your grounds. 9 times out of ten when a bass distorts it's something in the grounding.

[jgregpegleg]

Thanks so very much for the initial ideas for this.