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Piezo Bridge : Pros/Cons?
- Thread starter IAmTheAntipop
- Start date
I have an Ibanez BTB 785PB. It's got Bartolini MK2s and Piezo pickups. The Piezo setup has a volume for each string, and overall volume, and bass. That's on the Pre for it. On my knobs, I have a volume, and a Treble.
What I can say about this setup, is that it's got a really cool acoustic sound like you're playing on nylon strings. It's definitely different. It's VERY VERY "Chime-ish". LOTS of treble coming from these things.
What I was doing was keeping my Bartolini volume at 100%, and sometimes I bring in a little bit of the piezos. Maybe a 1/4 to 1/3 turn just to bring the high end into my mix. In a loud band setting, it kind of adds a little tone that's cool, but definitely takes a lot of time to dial in.
With the 5 string volumes, I put the low B @ 100%, E at 90%, 80,75, and 50 since the low strings seem to be very prone to let all those unmuted notes really come out when you don't want them.
I dig the Piezos on this bass, but I rarely really use em. They take a lot of adjusting to get a sound you want, and I find that I'm better off just adding a little bit of it to my tone and not full on piezo. I do like the fact that I can completely cut them out by just turning the volume off. Info on these things is VERY difficult to find. I searched high and low for info, samples, ANYTHING on these before I made a trade for this bass here on TB. I don't regret it though. Even if I don't use the Piezo setup, I've still got some great sounding Bartolinis. If you want I can maybe record some examples of it this weekend.
What I can say about this setup, is that it's got a really cool acoustic sound like you're playing on nylon strings. It's definitely different. It's VERY VERY "Chime-ish". LOTS of treble coming from these things.
What I was doing was keeping my Bartolini volume at 100%, and sometimes I bring in a little bit of the piezos. Maybe a 1/4 to 1/3 turn just to bring the high end into my mix. In a loud band setting, it kind of adds a little tone that's cool, but definitely takes a lot of time to dial in.
With the 5 string volumes, I put the low B @ 100%, E at 90%, 80,75, and 50 since the low strings seem to be very prone to let all those unmuted notes really come out when you don't want them.
I dig the Piezos on this bass, but I rarely really use em. They take a lot of adjusting to get a sound you want, and I find that I'm better off just adding a little bit of it to my tone and not full on piezo. I do like the fact that I can completely cut them out by just turning the volume off. Info on these things is VERY difficult to find. I searched high and low for info, samples, ANYTHING on these before I made a trade for this bass here on TB. I don't regret it though. Even if I don't use the Piezo setup, I've still got some great sounding Bartolinis. If you want I can maybe record some examples of it this weekend.
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When I built my P-bass I installed 2 piezos under the bridge. I bought 2 piezo buzzers at radio shack, pulled the elements out and carved cavities under the bridge.
I never use them on their own, too thin sounding, but mixed with the P-bass PU it sweetens up the sound really nicely.
I never use them on their own, too thin sounding, but mixed with the P-bass PU it sweetens up the sound really nicely.
The lack of people chiming in just goes to show how difficult it is to find info on these damn things. Lol
Just to add a bit to it-
certainly is difficult to find anything definitive, especially for bass.
I was lucky to pick up a Cort C5P (for piezo) and combined with the magnetic dual-coils, sounds great.
The Fishman Powerbridge has individual piezo elements in each saddle, which are wired to a collector board under the bridge casting. It looks similar and may be the same as the one that Spector uses. I think the preamp is where the magic is here, tho- it is tuned for a bass, not for a guitar, so the frequencies are very usable, and not all 'trebley' like some I've read about. The preamp has separate buffers, and vol/tone knobs for the piezo and for the magnetic pickups.
Fishman made a preamp that combined piezo and magnetic pickups that Washburn used- don't know if it was for bass, or just for guitar- no info that I could find.
EMG and Bartolini both also make preamp/buffers for piezo that are designed to use (also) with magnetic pickups. Don't know if they are tuned for bass or not. All the frequencies are there, it's just whether the preamp is designed to allow the bass thru and be balanced with the higher ones.
The main thing with piezos is that they need a buffer to bring the impedance lower, matching what's req'd for an amp. It may be a factor of the high impedance that the higher frequencies come thru easier, overshadowing the lows.
I've got a couple projects in the works, but seems there is a lot more to learn than what's readily avail.
certainly is difficult to find anything definitive, especially for bass.
I was lucky to pick up a Cort C5P (for piezo) and combined with the magnetic dual-coils, sounds great.
The Fishman Powerbridge has individual piezo elements in each saddle, which are wired to a collector board under the bridge casting. It looks similar and may be the same as the one that Spector uses. I think the preamp is where the magic is here, tho- it is tuned for a bass, not for a guitar, so the frequencies are very usable, and not all 'trebley' like some I've read about. The preamp has separate buffers, and vol/tone knobs for the piezo and for the magnetic pickups.
Fishman made a preamp that combined piezo and magnetic pickups that Washburn used- don't know if it was for bass, or just for guitar- no info that I could find.
EMG and Bartolini both also make preamp/buffers for piezo that are designed to use (also) with magnetic pickups. Don't know if they are tuned for bass or not. All the frequencies are there, it's just whether the preamp is designed to allow the bass thru and be balanced with the higher ones.
The main thing with piezos is that they need a buffer to bring the impedance lower, matching what's req'd for an amp. It may be a factor of the high impedance that the higher frequencies come thru easier, overshadowing the lows.
I've got a couple projects in the works, but seems there is a lot more to learn than what's readily avail.
It's pretty straighforward really. Just get a twin buffer from Bart or wherever. If you can follow a circuit diagram and know how to use strip board, you can make one for about 10 bucks. Make sure it's input Z on at least one channel is 5meg or more. Run the piezo signal into one channel, the mag pickup into the other and use a dual gang 25KB pot as a blend between piezo and mag. You may experiment with the phase of either pickup to get the best blended tone. If you have two mag pickups, then use a standard blend pot to combine these passively, before running this into the twin buffer. The output of the buffer goes into your treble/bass pre. The output of this goes to your master vol (10-25KA pot).
In the Basses section there is a club thread dedicated to the Ibanez Portamento which has a piezo bridge. You will find some piezo chatter there.
