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Lady 5Jane - Headless, Fretless 5 String Prototype (With Piano Pins)

#61
I have a bit of experience with piezos. The buffer makes a huge difference. I enjoy woodworking, but I'm not too fond of soldering, so I'm a user and fan of the Cafe Walter PZP-1. At $50 it's a no-brainer for me. I have plans for a piezo-only Ampeg Devil Bass -ish fretless in the future...

I'm a little concerned with the notion of a disc piezo embedded into a set-neck joint. The quality of piezos can be highly variable, and I'd hate to see you glue one in that doesn't sound good. Any way you could temporarily install it with the neck clamped in place before committing to the glue?
 
#62
Invalid Link Removed is the piezo disc I ordered from Mouser, and the piezo bar is a cheap Chinese generic I had on hand. i would love to hear your opinion on what you think the results will be in the neck channel... I could bolt on the neck to test ahead of time, but then I would have screw holes in the back from the operation. While not the end of the world, and able to be covered with plugs, I have had my heart set on a deep set neck from the get go. Definitely worth considering...
 
#65
@ piezo - you definitely want the balanced ones, yours is unbalanced and tbh, looks kinda low-quality - i just made this for myself (see below) and it works absolutely great, even to my surprise. No noise, full bass, really good response. I ordered about 10 of them, because, as others said, some are plain rubbish. I was making them with couple of friends and despite all 10 of them were theoretically the same, two of them were noisy, had no bass etc. But this one in pic below turned out way beyond expectations. I seal the wires with thin blobs of two-component glue (sorry, dunno what's the correct terminology).

I use piezos like this for experimental impro music - i stick them to various parts of bass guitars - and guess what: the most 'signal' i get is from headstocks - bassy, boomy, wooden and very loud. Just fyi and for future experiments.
piezo_small.jpg
 
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#67
I fielded a few questions from the machinist last night about the dimensions of the headpiece. I mocked up the following diagram in Inkscape to provide to him and thought it might be useful to the masses, if for no other reason than for your amusement at my lack of design skills. ;)

lady-5jane-headpiece_zps783847d0.png
 
#70
Very interesting info with the neck piezo.
From the other attempts I've seen, there was not much success-
Certainly, it hasn't had much attention, and maybe just needs the right person with the right concept to make it happen.
 
#71
JustForSport said:
Looks good, just needs 'thickness' and any radius on edges.
Click to expand...

Thank you! I sent an email with some clarifications, including thickness, and I am being told I will have it in hand tomorrow night. *fingers crossed*

JustForSport said:
From the other attempts I've seen, there was not much success-
Click to expand...

DeMars Guitars has a bass model named "The Long Trail Bass" that employs a disc piezo in the neck pocket - it's where I first got the idea. They blend the neck piezo with the bridge piezo to get a balanced tone, and based on the videos I have seen on YouTube it sounds pretty good.
 
#72
michaelwayneharwood said:
DeMars Guitars has a bass model named "The Long Trail Bass" that employs a disc piezo in the neck pocket
Click to expand...

That's interesting (and a very nice looking bass)- all the YouTube vids I found were of the mag bass, not specifying what part of the playing was only on piezo, except for one vid, and it was slap only and didn't exhibit much tone. As long as the disc has the right amount of compression on it, and is allowed to compress/de-compress, it should work.
 
#73
@ piezos - I'm getting them thru this company in Italy: Invalid Link Removed (scroll down a bit, the golden ones). THey come in 3 sizes or so - I used the 35mm diameter one - after quite some experimentation, the bigger ones collect broader range of sound/frequencies and the smallest one tend to focus on bass/middle range - YMMV of course..

TheJoshinator said:
I could be totally off base about this, but I have a suspicion regarding that piezo built straight onto the cable. @Duplo42, did you build a phantom-powered FET preamp into the plug casing? Sorta like this?
http://www.till.com/articles/PreampCable/
Click to expand...

Nope, no preamp, nothing - just piezo that I soldered (not very tidy work while at it also...) to thin but high quality cable with neutrik stereo jack. Local theatre uses same procedure to amplify the stage boards (yeah, the stage boards, so that they can run all the noise the dancers are making thru PA for special effects). We also tested various lenghts of cables (balanced & unbalanced versions) - with balanced configuration, there was no real drop in quality up 10m cables.

Anyhow, they work really well - I'll have an audio interface at my disposal over the weekend and can make couple of recordings with piezo straight to the card and no post-production if you wanna hear it in action.
My friend uses the same ones for double bass, but he is also using a small preamp by Ekhlund (or something like that?) with flat settings.

Here's the pic of three of them waiting to be installed soon...(the biggest one is 35mm one)
 

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#75
Duplo42 said:
My friend uses the same ones for double bass, but he is also using a small preamp by Ekhlund (or something like that?) with flat settings.
Click to expand...

Ehrlund. Those pickups are exceptional. I have one. But their not piezo.

If you're using any kind of piezo, you really want some sort of buffer preamp with the right input impedance. Otherwise it's captain crunch and his pet duck quacking away with next to no bottom end. In fact, when I put a piezo in my first fretless, I only used it to give the sound extra detail, not bottom end.
 
#76
@Duplo42 - Looking at the specs for the piezo's on that site I think I should be OK from an "electrical characteristics" perspective. The piezo's I have on order are rated at a max of 1000 ohms and 65khz. They are certainly smaller than the ones you are using at 22mm, but I think they will work for a quick test.

@reverendrally - I will be building a preamp, and should be able to match the input impedance so the output is appropriate. In my opinion the only duck that should be associated with the bass is Dunn.

@Barnaby - Thanks so much! I am honestly humbled by your comment and others I have received on this thread, but honestly don't feel that I have done a stellar job on this build. I certainly have learned a lot and future implementations will benefit from my mistakes on this one. I do not believe that piano pins would be a good implementation for most players, but they are working very well for me.
 
#77
@Barnaby - Thanks so much! I am honestly humbled by your comment and others I have received on this thread, but honestly don't feel that I have done a stellar job on this build. I certainly have learned a lot and future implementations will benefit from my mistakes on this one. I do not believe that piano pins would be a good implementation for most players, but they are working very well for me.
Click to expand...

Cheers! Your approach is making me consider some different ways to do things. I'm planning a headless 8-string guitar to be started soon, and this is giving me a lot to think about. The build is really nice, and your ideas are extremely interesting. This sort of thread is, for me, what makes forums such as this one so worthwhile. :thumbsup:
 
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#79
@ piezos - i got a tip to use the ones in my photos from a friend who is doublebassist/experimentator. He tried a lot of various companies and even thou specs are the same for all, these ones were best.
Of course getting a preamp/buffer would be best. I'm just saying that these work great with no buffer/preamp. To eliminate any harshness, I put something in between them - a thin veneer or even silly putty works great, for example.
But with the one I showed, I use nothing and it works really well. I will do some recordings over the weekend by putting them on various parts of bass with no veneer or anything in between. Then do need a pressure so there is no rattle happening.
 

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