Seperate preamps and jacks for piezo and mag pickups on one bass- Anyone done this ?

The Fishman Powerchip can do this with it's "Smart Jack"

 

I did this for a while on a Tacoma ABG - used a stereo jack on the bass & a break out box at he other end. Seemed to work fine. Mic style pickup in the body, fishman piezo under the bridge

 

My Ibanez EDA is active peizo, and passive soap, so technically, just some pots with the chips on them due to space issues, and it would have diff. active pre's, same jack of course, but as is tons of tonal variety. It uses 2 volumes instead of a blend which really is much more appropriate, and easier than splitting it like you suggested. I like the luthite too, right strings make all the difference on this bass.

 

In my case I had it built to accept a stereo input cable from the bass and output two independant mono signals with some buffer thingy to prevent the mic & piezo from loading each other. I jumped from there to two independant signal chains. The thing worked like a champ.

 

I was wanting to do a similar setup with a 60s Kent EB-2 style bass. I'd like to add a piezo pickup, and have it wired to a push/pull so that when I pull on a bridge pickup knob, it cuts off the magnetic pickups and "turns on" the piezo. Or if it would be simpler/more realistic, I could use a separate mini toggle switch, instead of the push-pull pot.

 

I don't know if their basses are also wired this way, but the Parker guitars did this with a simple stereo jack & a Y-cable.

 

I actually just modded a bass with a piezo bridge setup, and used a blend preamp. What I had thought about doing was a separate jack for the piezo output only, with no EQ at all. I've got some dual 1/4" jack plates that would be suitable but I went with the blend only just for simplicity's sake.

The easy way to do it is to use a 1/4" jack with a transfer switch, so that when you plug into the piezo jack, the mag signal bypasses the blend knob. This means you end up with an expensive output jack, but there's no extra switches on the bass anywhere. The added advantage of this setup (as opposed to just cutting the signal from the piezo to the blend circuit) is that you then get to use the blend pot as a piezo volume control.

I don't have the part # for the jack I was looking at but it's got six terminals (!) which is big fun to wire up...

I've got to put up a thread about my piezo bass mod anyway, I'll see if I can dredge up the info when I do that.

 

hey S, have you seen these around anywhere? i have mine wired up with a battery kill switch to make ends meet, and would love to get one of these (it is true that the smart jack/fishman chip will do both signals separate when a trs cable is used. cool option )

 

Hey hey,
I kinda did that - but kept things passive. Didn't want to bother with the 9v onboard thing and really like the sound of the bart calssics on their own in the fretless. As mentioned, I used a stereo jack - tip has the passive barts and the ring has the piezo. Use a Y cable and run the piezo's to a Fishman Basss Eq and then into a Boss LS-2 'B' input. Add the barts striaght into the LS-2 'A' input. LS-2 can blend like a mixer or switch between the pup's. I also have a toggle near the jack on the bass plate where I can swith the piezo to the tip-off-sleeve.
David