Pickup The World film piezos?

[lowfreqgeek]

I'm thinking of adding a piezo setup to at least 1 or 2 of my basses. I have a Rick Turner Electroline 5-string fretless that is downright amazing, but I'd like to have the same kind of body resonance in some of my other fretted and fretless basses.

I recently found this and it looks promising: The PUTW Electric Guitar Pickup

I'd have to also get the preamp for it. One would almost certainly go into my G&L L2500 fretted bass, which is already heavily modified in the electronics. I may also put one into my fretless L2500, or my fretless MM-style 4 string (which boasts a HIGHLY resonant body/neck combination).

I'm not trying to get the same kind of piezo tone that my Turner has; I'm after more of the resonance and adding an "acoustic" element to my electric tone.

That and a MIDI pickup on the G&L would be one crazy combination of goodness.

[96tbird]

Rip off! go here and get it for $12.00 you only need to insulate the terminals: Piezo Films . I have been playing with them and wasn't able to get any sound out when under a saddle. it was a solid block saddle in and single string bridge element like some bass builders use: Set of 4 Single String Bass Bridge BLACK | eBay Not enough vibration getting through. Though the saddles on them are a very tight fit. I have not tried them under conventional saddles where the height screws are the only points of contact. I suspect it would work better with saddles you can easily move around. I did put it under a piece of wood makeshift saddle on my test bed (2x4 spruce) and got glorious sound out of it, though the highs really come through and string noise is awful, but you can EQ it out.

Incidentally, the lack of vibration further reinforces my belief that high mass bridges do nothing.

[lowfreqgeek]

I am able to get plenty of sound out of a disassembled MuRata piezo buzzer mounted under the bridge plate, but certain strings don't come through as well. I'm looking for something that makes good contact across the length of the bridge.

I'll check out your link. You should be able to get ample signal if you buffer it correctly, so if you weren't getting anything, it's either defective, or it wasn't buffered correctly.

Thanks!

[96tbird]

Nope, buffered. That style of bridge is the problem. It's two piece, a saddle block and the saddle insert in the block. No vibes. Just my experience, YMMV. I'm not done playing yet! For 12 bucks and a 15 dollar acoustic guitar 3 band buffer to experiment with (ebay)... good fun. I am building a fretless piezo only bass with a short scale cheapo Japan neck from the early 70's and a solid oak body. I have decided to go with a rosewood acoustic bass bridge and a ceramic piezo loaded AEB saddle, sounds awesome on my test bed.

[lowfreqgeek]

I got ya. For $12, it's not a problem. I agree the $125 PUTW would've been a ripoff in that application.

Good luck with your fretless build!

[96tbird]

Oh yeah, and you can trim the films longitudinally without issue. But you cannot cut the free end off. Conductivity is lost and it's dead.

[bassbenj]

Originally Posted by lowfreqgeek

I got ya. For $12, it's not a problem. I agree the $125 PUTW would've been a ripoff in that application.

Good luck with your fretless build!

Actually there is more to this than meets the eye. PUTW make excellent pickups (I've actually did some testing for them using the pickups on drums in the past...They are excellent!). While I haven't used them on guitars or basses, I'm sure they will work great. (Remember the high Z (10 meg) input is ESSENTIAL to get the low bass notes. On a guitar you can get away with less).

Here's the deal. What you are paying for with PUTW is they've done all the hard stuff for you. One of those "hard" things is to properly shield the piezo film against hum. The $12 units are essentially the same thing only there is no shield. One side is "hot" and one side is ground. With a 10 meg input Z get ready for some MAJOR hum pickup unless you do things right. One way is to coat the pickup with conductive paint as PUTW does (not so simple as it will be hard to get paint to stick to plastic).

But here's the deal on a bass. The bridge is grounded SO if you install the film with the HOT side toward the bridge it sandwiches the "hot" terminal between the ground side and the grounded bridge making a decent hum shield. Of course the connections are still open and somehow you need to shield those too (wrap with copper foil?) And then you need to find some nice tiny NON-MICROPHONIC coax cable. Then you need to possibly add connectors to it. So in short PUTW pickups are not a rip off, but you CAN save some money if you are willing to work around the difficulties with the basic film sensors. And don't forget FIRST You have to insulate all the conductive parts and THEN put grounded shield over it.

I have also done guitars with the ceramic sensors out of piezo buzzers. They are dirt cheap and easy to use although they also still have one "hot" side so shielding is necessary. But the ceramic disks have much poorer tone than the films.

Also for bass (one reason I haven't experimented much with basses yet) is that I think you'd get MUCH better results with one sensor (with trim pots) on EACH string, Carvin-style.

I've also used the piezo coax supposed to go under a guitar saddle. I wasn't impressed with that material.

[lowfreqgeek]

Bassbenj,

Thanks for all the comments. I certainly haven't written PUTW off for my intended application. I've got all the know-how and skills to make the raw piezo film work well; I don't have the time. As they say, time is money... Well, in my case, if I wait to do it all myself, it'll be another year before I actually get anywhere. So I'm better off spending money instead.

I agree that individual saddle piezos is the way to go IF you want to use the piezo as an independent pickup. My Rick Turner has individual piezos for each saddle - epoxied into customized Hipshot A-style saddles (long, long before Hipshot had the piezo option) and it sounds amazing, always. I can wiggle the strings at 2-3Hz and watch the drivers on my Epifani cabs respond. Well, as long as I'm driving them with my Epifani amp. The other amps, not so much. Anyway, for my particular needs at the moment, I'm not looking for stand-alone piezo tone, but for something to capture the body resonance to add into the magnetic tone. My solid-body Turner captures plenty of that and I love how it sounds/feels. So, that being the case, I think a film pickup under the bridge would work well. I also thought about experimenting with the neck joint. Could be interesting.

The ceramic buzzer element worked surprisingly well in my test-bass. I interfaced it to a 12.8Mohm Aguilar DB900. Yes, it was noisy (in part due to lack of shielding, and partly due to the 22dB drop through the Jensen, and subsequent additional gain), but the lows were big and defined, and it had all the "air" I could hope for. Oddly enough, some strings didn't pickup well at all, others did. It wasn't certain notes, but entire strings. However, I literally only gave it about 5 minutes from when I grabbed the buzzer out of my bin and stuffed it under the bridge without any other effort. It was enough to make me think about exploring it more, though.

I would almost consider a Hipshot Piezo bridge, but this is an L2500 (well, 2 of them) and I'm not sure I want to put a Hipshot onto a G&L. However, I MIGHT be able to fit Graphtec piezo saddles for .669" c-to-c spacing into the G&L bridge. The biggest issue is where the intonation screw lines up. There's *just* enough room between the outer rails to get five .669" saddles in, but the intonation screws may not line up.

Oh the joys of "customizing" gear! I'd be better off building something like another Warmoth Gecko, putting my own hardware onto it, reshaping the neck, and installing the same electronics package that I've developed in my G&L. But the G&L has a certain character or soul that I just can't get away from.

Then there's the whole MIDI thing...