Pickup for Fretless bass

[Bass Pal]

I recently took on the task of converting an old P-bass clone into a fretless, the pickups were busted so I took them out and I'm looking for a new one, I've been considering using an acoutic piezo pickup, has anyone tried this on a solid body? I'm not too concerned about the tone quality, i just want whatever's easiest to install and preferably as cheap as possible, any suggestions?

 

[FretlessFatty]

I'm curious about this option too -- putting a piezo on a solid body bass. I'm curious about the tone, though.

 

[abarson]

I bought one of these piezo bass bridges off of ebay for a custom build which isn't complete. You will need a preamp for the piezo, and you should look for one with the option of blending in the magnetic pickup, such as an Artec MT2 or MT3.
WELCOME TO ARTECSOUND

A stacked knob would allow you to make the change without drilling new holes, but you are going to need to consider how much space you have in the control cavity for the preamp and extra controls.

 

[TN WOODMAN]

My current favorite Fender sized pickups for precision and Jazz routes is hands down the Wilde P46 and J45. For any application or style of music . Adjust your volume and tone pots accordingly and be blown away.

 

[abarson]

After rereading your post, going my route with a piezo won't be the cheapest or easiest. If you want to go the cheap piezo route you could make an indent under the bridge and install a simple piezo buzzer element from an electronics store under it. It probably won't sound very good without a preamp. Making DIY Piezo Pickup
DIY piezo preamp: Discrete FET Guitar Preamp

Cheapest will be any Chinese P-bass pickups off of ebay, and since you don't care about tone quality, that's your best bet.
4 String Humbucker Pickup for electric P Bass White | eBay

Maybe someone generous on TB has done a pickup swap recently and will donate the old ones.

 

[Bass Pal]

After rereading your post, going my route with a piezo won't be the cheapest or easiest. If you want to go the cheap piezo route you could make an indent under the bridge and install a simple piezo buzzer element from an electronics store under it. It probably won't sound very good without a preamp. Making DIY Piezo Pickup
DIY piezo preamp: Discrete FET Guitar Preamp

Cheapest will be any Chinese P-bass pickups off of ebay, and since you don't care about tone quality, that's your best bet.
4 String Humbucker Pickup for electric P Bass White | eBay

Maybe someone generous on TB has done a pickup swap recently and will donate the old ones.

Thanks a lot for the input, i might consider the piezo buzzler, sounds like a fun experiment, I'll try to share results, as for the latter that might be more of a hassle given that i live in Mexico

 

[Rockin John]

These piezo buzzers do work, but not especially well IMHO. But my experiments were very brief. The flat brass side is the grounded part so be careful where you put it. If it’s going under the bridge, put the brass side against the bridge.

The ceramic side is easy to wreck so be careful how you place it and tighten any screws around it. Fortunately they’re very cheap though!

You **must** follow the pickup with a buffer: the FET buffer circuit as provided by abarson is fine (tho, IMHO, the input resistor, R1 who’s value is 3M3 is too low: 33M would be better.)

FETs have notoriously wide characteristic spreads and you would do well to buy a cheap bag of 10 from China via eBay,for example, and select them on testing the circuit. The text says to look for about 6 volts between the Drain (the lower nd of R3 on the diagram) and 0v. Build the circuit on a test strip then plug each FET in in turn to get 6 volts. Anywhere between 5 and 6 volts should be fine. Then, using the selected FET, build the circuit to put in the bass.

 

[MAJOR METAL]

EMGs are also quiet.