So I’ve been experimenting with different piezos in my Washburn AB40 custom after they wouldn’t return an email or provide any support. It’s a thin hollow body/acoustic with separate individual bridges. After some minor modifications I installed graphtech ghost loaded saddles. My A string is much hotter than the other strings and my E string seems weak. There’s no hum so I don’t think its a grounding issue. I set it up with some new flatwounds as I’ve done many times and made adjustments to try and balance the strings output with no change so I don’t think it’s a contact issue with the string and saddle. I even resoldered the E string thinking I may have left the iron on the 30 gauge wire too long but no change. I’m stumped and there’s not much in the way of support for this instrument/pickup combination online. Does anyone see something I’m missing or have and helpful wisdom they could share with me? I want to be done with teching and back to playing.
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One string is louder on new Graphtech ghosts.
- Thread starter BaceisthePlace
- Start date
This is due in part to the bass itself, any and all basses will resonate at different frequencies depending on a vast number of things.
Wood Grain, Species of Wood, Size of Resonance chamber, String Gauge, Style of Bridge and Nut, Neck Dimensions, Etc..
Most basses that I have come across, especially acoustic basses, have a very weak low E, very loud A and intermediated D and G strings.
If you want to have an equal volume across all strings I would suggest getting a Piezo system in which you can change the gain control for each string, hereby eliminating the volume difference at the cost of tone.
Good luck to you in your endeavors, Im of little use as I am fairly inexperienced with Piezo systems.
Wood Grain, Species of Wood, Size of Resonance chamber, String Gauge, Style of Bridge and Nut, Neck Dimensions, Etc..
Most basses that I have come across, especially acoustic basses, have a very weak low E, very loud A and intermediated D and G strings.
If you want to have an equal volume across all strings I would suggest getting a Piezo system in which you can change the gain control for each string, hereby eliminating the volume difference at the cost of tone.
Good luck to you in your endeavors, Im of little use as I am fairly inexperienced with Piezo systems.
Welcome to piezo pickup world. I've had a couple of those in my shop, and played an "acoustic weekend" at a church, where I was handed an acoustic to play - I ended up tearing it apart to deal with this issue. I got it to be much better, but not really where I would have liked it. Piezo pickups are fickle devices - the pressure under the strings have to be absolutely identical, or you get what you describe.
One of the happiest moments of my playing career was the end of the last service I had to play that acoustic on - while the music we made was good, I've never had a musical instrument fight me more than that stupid thing. The unevenness in sustain ( a minefield of dead and live spots), the piezo output consistency thing, the timbre differences of different notes - if I had to play that thing every weekend, I'd likely quit in short order.
One of the happiest moments of my playing career was the end of the last service I had to play that acoustic on - while the music we made was good, I've never had a musical instrument fight me more than that stupid thing. The unevenness in sustain ( a minefield of dead and live spots), the piezo output consistency thing, the timbre differences of different notes - if I had to play that thing every weekend, I'd likely quit in short order.
It may get you nowhere, but try swapping the E and A saddles. At least if the issue is exactly the same after doing so, you know it's not the saddles.
Ultimately, though, you do need a piezo preamp with individual string gain adjustments.
- John
Ultimately, though, you do need a piezo preamp with individual string gain adjustments.
- John
Well this bass does have seperate volume control. This is the 3rd set of piezos including the originals that have been on it. I’ve broken 2 acoustic bar type piezos slapping and this is a far cry from an acoustic. It has 24 frets and feels and plays more like a hollow body. I’ve set it up with at least a dozen different string types over the years. This bridge is not new but the graphtechs are. This is the first time I’ve encountered this problem that I wasn’t able to correct with adjustments to the string/bridge contact or the seperate volume pots. I just wired it up this evening, no one seems to have set a bass up like this that has shared anything online and graphtech support is off until Monday afternoon and Washburn won’t even acknowledge that I’ve tried to contact them multiple times which makes me wish I didn’t love the feel and playability and frankly the only 24 fret acoustic with an adjustable bridge I’ve found. I’ve been playing bass 30 years, studied music in college and I’ve been a professional audio engineer for 25 years in August. I’ll never go back to magnetic pickups personally and these sound great but something is not right and I haven’t heard of anyone else having this combination of preamp and piezos. I’m hoping for a guitar tech with more knowledge and experience than me to give me the magic bullet fix.
I tried a Graphtech hipshot loaded bridge after one of the originals died and I couldn’t get any support from Washburn. It’s an arch top body but it has a flat spot where the bridges are mounted so it actually fit but it did get some crosstalk and I knew it might. The original washburns had more balls on the low end than any piezo I’ve ever played but the graphtechs are much smoother. I also just got a tube preamp and an analog multi band compressor/dynamic EQ for my rig and I’m dying to get it all dialed in and ready to record some tracks.
It's easier to quiet a piezo pickup down than it is to boost it. So, you might try deadening down the loudest strings, like the A, to make it equal to the E. For example, put a tiny strip of black electrical tape in the groove of the A string saddle, under the string. See how much that quiets down the A.
So. This morning I went through the bass with a fine tooth comb metering throughout and ultimately switching the loudest and softest piezo’s positions. The problems moved with them. Now the E is hot and the A is soft. I switched D with G for the heck of it and no change there. These are my 5th set of I dividual seperate bridge piezos and I’ve never seen a gain difference this substantial. It’s around 10dB (Double) +/- 1 dB judging by a 4 segment Meter. I also discovered a pretty significant difference in the 4 capacitors. Which explains some previous issues. I’ve ordered higher new ones with higher capacitance (and hopefully more consistency) for a darker tone but something is definitely awry. I got these off reverb as new but I Suspect they may have been installed and passed on. Everything I’ve gotten directly from Graphtech has been solid and their customer service is some of the best I’ve ever encountered in the industry. They’ve already acknowledged my email and assigned a ticket number to my issue. So I’ll wait to talk to support tomorrow. It does workout a little better with the E string being the hot one for now and I have to say this is the best sounding Piezo/pre/bass combo I’ve had yet. Thanks for your comments, those who chimed in. It’s always great to have a sounding board here to bounce ideas off of for fresh perspective. ✌
