Piezo direct out...possible? How?

[Captain_joe6]

I was wondering, something I often do, if it would be possible to run the 4 piezo signals to 4 separate jacks and mix them externally? Its something I'd like to try on a future project, but I'm not totally familiar with piezo wiring, and would like to know exactly what I would need to put into the signal chain of each piezo output between the transducer itself and the jack? I figure there might have to be some sort of buffer in there somewhere, if so, where do I accuire (or how do I build) such a thing? I don't want an onboard volume or tone, just the simplest, best sounding path from transducer to jack.

Thanks all!

[luknfur]

Originally Posted by Captain_joe6

I was wondering, something I often do, if it would be possible to run the 4 piezo signals to 4 separate jacks and mix them externally? Its something I'd like to try on a future project, but I'm not totally familiar with piezo wiring, and would like to know exactly what I would need to put into the signal chain of each piezo output between the transducer itself and the jack? I figure there might have to be some sort of buffer in there somewhere, if so, where do I accuire (or how do I build) such a thing? I don't want an onboard volume or tone, just the simplest, best sounding path from transducer to jack.

Thanks all!

FWIW:

sure it's possible. I ran a pair of piezo's straight to the jack no buffer.

Do a TB search for piezo's. There's several threads. Radio Shack piezo for one. You're not going to get anything but a hollow woody treble tone from cheap piezo's - and that's all I've looked at. Seems Rick Turner said a quality piezo would do like a quality condenser mic - low!

[Rick Turner]

Piezo pickups need to work into a pretty high input impedance on a buffer to get maximum low end. They also make lousy line drivers which is why we generally prefer to buffer them on-board. That said, the first piezo bridge I did for Brian Bromberg in 1989 had four passive pickups going to four output jacks, and he ran those into four Countryman direct boxes into a recording console to lay down his stereo spread tracks. Crystal based piezos' signals do better passive than do piezo film signals...