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Author Topic: acoustic piezo transducer or pickup en electric guitar  (Read 4214 times)

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El Chiguete

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So I'm curious to know if anyone ever tried out an acoustic piezo transducer or pickup en electric guitar? Im talking about maybe this:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/acoustic/perfect-timbre-accelerometer?gclid=CJ7Ju_LbpckCFYX2HwodfJUFAQ

or this:
https://www.seymourduncan.com/acoustic/acoustic-tube

One would be easily added to an electric guitar and the other could work on the middle pickup position??? Oh no there I go with another crazy idea from the top of my head  :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm:
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rnolan

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Hey El, Zappa used to have multiple piezo PUs in his guitar neck, so people have played with the idea (no pun intended LoL) so it's not such a crazy idea.  The piezo is going to PU/respond to vibrations in the wood around it, so it won't act like a conventional electric guitar PU. But if you want to get some of the vibration going through the wood it will pick that up. So where do you put them (I've not heard of just using 1 in an electric guitar), Zappa chose the neck (exactly where  :dunno: ). E.g. You could put one in the peghead (like clip on tuners use).  To put one in the middle PU position, you want to know that there is a good sound in the wood at that point/spot of the body.
Piezo PUs first came to light for acoustic guitars and you drilled a hole in the bridge and epoxied them in (anyone remember Hot Dots). That picked up the vibrations in the bridge. So they are a very different transducer (PU) than the electric (magnetic) guitar PUs we are used to which cause a signal to be induced in the coil from a revolving/vibrating metal (alloy) string.
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GuitarBuilder

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So I'm curious to know if anyone ever tried out an acoustic piezo transducer or pickup en electric guitar? Im talking about maybe this:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/acoustic/perfect-timbre-accelerometer?gclid=CJ7Ju_LbpckCFYX2HwodfJUFAQ

or this:
https://www.seymourduncan.com/acoustic/acoustic-tube

Neither of those will sound very good on a solid body electric.  Hollow body electric maybe.

If you want a different kind of sound from your electric, you can retrofit your bridge with piezo pickups:

http://www.graphtech.com/products/brands/ghost/ghost-pickups---guitar
or
http://www.rmcpickup.com/powrbridgeg.html

I have a Brian Moore solid body guitar with RMC pickups in the bridge and the sound is very distinctive (although not the same as an acoustic, but has the flavor).

One would be easily added to an electric guitar and the other could work on the middle pickup position??? Oh no there I go with another crazy idea from the top of my head  :facepalm: :facepalm: :facepalm:
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rnolan

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IIRC Zappa used Barcus Berry hot dots in various places (several ??) in the neck, probably around harmonic spots
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vansinn

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What's your intended use for the piezo? I see two uses:
1. Obtain a slightly better cut-through-the-mix
2. Semi-acoustic sound.

Ad 1. This can be really helpful, both live and to some degree in the studio.
However, I really dislike the pure piezo sound per se, but that's of course a personal thing..

Ad 2. I've never heard any piezo system sounding really convincing.
For acoustic emulation, I'd suggest one of the Fishman emulator stomps - they have them for both classic and steel string. They're based on quite accurate impulse samplings of the real instruments.
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