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Connecting rod and disc piezos

I have a 3 disc transducer set that combine to one wire that then are soldered to a 1/4” jack. I have a rod piezo that connects (vis 2.5mm plug) to a 3 band active preamp (with a 9 volt battery), which then connects to a 1/4” jack. I would like to combine the discs & rod in one guitar to get both the string vibration from the rod and the soundboard vibration. I’m not interested in putting in a switch between the two, but just combining them into one. Should I put a 2.5 mm plug on the desk piezo wire then plug both the rod and discs into a 2.5 mm Y splitter to plug both into the preamp? Should I solder the disc piezos to the Jack after the preamp (which, of course, would mean the tone controls would affect only the rod piezo)? Or is there another, better way?

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on October 28, 2017 at 1:08pm

Not sure why you wouldn't separate the 2 different types, but your business there, you could easily use the y piece like you say, those 2.5 mm jacks are usually pretty tight with no movement, i would probably solder both to a single plug into the pre amp though, and to me, it makes no sense at all to attach the discs after the pre amp, unless the very specific sound that gives you, is the sound you are chasing

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Pieper on October 28, 2017 at 1:57pm

I’m not sure why I would attach the discs after the preamp, either, except that they don’t seem to need the preamp to be heard by my amp, whereas the rod does. Given the difference in sensitivity between the discs and the rod, I thought maybe I shouldn’t run them through the same preamp that would adjust them all the same. I thought maybe I would want to be able to turn up the rod versus the discs, to try to balance them out. Dunno, I’m a beginner.

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on October 28, 2017 at 2:08pm

OK, I get that, the pre amp will help the disc signal as well, but like you say, what you do to one might work against the other, without some form of separation, or a blend pot, it's really just guesswork, another idea might be to just add a volume pot to the discs before they enter the pre amp, giving you a method to control how much disc sound you add

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Pieper on October 28, 2017 at 2:03pm

As for why I don’t want to separate them, when I play it with one or the other (the rod or the discs), each seems to have something the other lacks. One (the rod) seems to be a more direct reflection of the string vibrations, but doesn’t really reflect much of the character of the material I’m using for the body. The other (discs) does the opposite: it captures more of the uniqueness of this particular soundboard, but is less crisp on the string notes. I would love to be able to blend both types of sounds.