Quick and easy mag pickup for upright

[jonphilpott]

Hi All,

I've been experimenting with different kinds of piezo pickups for my chinese 1/4 upright and haven't been having much success. The best I had so far was dual piezo disc solution in the wings that worked pretty well, except when I tried to play it at church (which is actually a very loud environment...) I was getting crazy feedback.

So I built a magnetic pickup, this is just a prototype so far. It's the bridge pickup out of my squier jazz bass (i never use that bridge pickup anyway ), mounted inside a radio shack project box. There's a shaped piece of bass wood mounted to the side of the project box which is attached to the end of the finger board with 3M double sided foam tape. The pickup is mounted on the project box with the usual screws and foam so its angle can be adjusted. The project box has a tone knob on the side, which unfortunately doesn't work The only minipot i had that would fit inside appears to be non-functioning.

[Francois Blais]

Cool!

[RBrownBass]

Originally Posted by jonphilpott

Hi All,

I've been experimenting with different kinds of piezo pickups for my chinese 1/4 upright and haven't been having much success. The best I had so far was dual piezo disc solution in the wings that worked pretty well, except when I tried to play it at church (which is actually a very loud environment...) I was getting crazy feedback.

So I built a magnetic pickup, this is just a prototype so far. It's the bridge pickup out of my squier jazz bass (i never use that bridge pickup anyway ), mounted inside a radio shack project box. There's a shaped piece of bass wood mounted to the side of the project box which is attached to the end of the finger board with 3M double sided foam tape. The pickup is mounted on the project box with the usual screws and foam so its angle can be adjusted. The project box has a tone knob on the side, which unfortunately doesn't work The only minipot i had that would fit inside appears to be non-functioning.

Very nice work! I'd warn you, tho, that now both your doghouse and your Squier are going to have hum.

[jonphilpott]

I noticed, I'm going to replace the pickup in the squier and put a pair of P-bass pickups on the doghouse, which should let me match the string arch a little better.