Piezo pick-up questions

[Krompeer]

Hello everyone.
Once again-please don't mind if I spell wrong.
I tried to find issues about piezo pick-up mounting but I didn't find answers to my problem.I have a hand made bass with emg p5j pick-ups, and I puted a piezo pick up under its bridge to get high frequencies on slap.When I plug only the piezo it sounds very very thin,no bass at all, but ok that was the goal.Here is the problem-when I connect piezo with standard pick-ups the,piezo sound "merges" with p5j so the overall sound I thick. I wanted to install piezo to add that sound, not to merge with standard pick-ups.
The second question is-I tried to find best resonance spot on my bass by putting my ear(sounds silly, I know) and I found that nicest tone is on upper "horn"(probably isn't right English term).Then I remembered that I saw few bassist with some kind of knob on that place. Has anyone done this(putting acoustic pick-up on that spot)?
I'll be very grateful if someone could share knowledge about this
Thanks

 

[Krompeer]

anyone?

 

[syciprider]

Add a blend/balance or separate volume knobs for your regular and piezo pickups?

 

[uprightben]

You don't want to put a pickup in the horn, it just won't work. I suggest you look at the electronics on your bass for ways to better eq and blend the piezo. Good luck!

 

[spade2you]

You'll need to route under the bridge for the wires from the piezo saddles. Not all bridges can have the saddles swapped out. Buffering a piezo to magnetic pickups is a royal pain and should only be done with someone who has a good knowledge of the electronics.

 

[Marcury]

The knob on the horn is just that. It is usually a blend control for the pickups. A pickup there would not receive enough vibration to provide usable tones. Piezos need to couple directly to the string vibrations hence their placement under the bridge and;

Buffering a piezo to magnetic pickups is a royal pain and should only be done with someone who has a good knowledge of the electronics.

+!

 

[Pilgrim]

I don't know if you can run the outputs of those pickups together. One issue is that many piezo pickups have a different impedence than magnetic pickups. When I play my acoustic-electric bass, between the instrument and the amp I use an ART Tube MP which converts the output of the piezo pickup to an impedence the amp likes much better. This considerably improves the sound.

I think this may be one reason that the posts above refer to this as a job for an expert in electronics.

 

[Rickett Customs]

+1.

A buffer/Pre, will fix the weakness.
One comes to mind, the NOLL electronics Mixpot 1 preamp, plus it gives you a separate control for it.

You're also in luck, Merchants can be found for this contraption in the UK.

Link:

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