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Transducer hanky roll

Well, I have been wanting a "better sound" out of my new cbg I made a while back. I have been tinkering with trying to wrap my own pickup..to no victory on that note...I said "The heck with it, I will work on a better transducer sound. Well. it seemed like every time I picked up my cbg it would hiss and growl at me. I like the growl...the hiss? No so much. I did have my transducer glued in between two mouse pads...but my transducer was just taped to the bottom of the guitar...everything I touch on the guitar was geting some sort of thud or feed back when I move my hand up and down the neck or just even touched it. So, I stuffed some news paper in side.....it seemed to dampen things okay,but aI wanted something more..I wanted a transduer that was not touching anything in the box. So, I said, "Heck, I will wrapp something around it'.....so I wrapped a old hanky around it...and WOW has it "fattened" my sound. It has a little more bass to the sound....not so much hi end and it is not as sensetive to touch as it was last time. So....so far...wrapping a transducer in a rag or something....changes the sound and it tucks in n the box nice and neat.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Crow on December 21, 2009 at 10:24am: could you show a picture of this????; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Hamhock on December 21, 2009 at 10:43am: yes indeed,,a picture would be great; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by R Johnson on December 23, 2009 at 12:39am: Yes… I would like to see a picture or two also as I am wanting to “tame “ the highs in my piezo.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by mike anderson on December 23, 2009 at 8:14am: i lined one with dynamat, worked really well, but, added a lot of weight.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Tres Seaver on December 23, 2009 at 10:47am: I have been "sandwiching" my piezos between thin bits of wood, held together with black silicone goo. Once that sets up, I can glue the sandwich to the soundboard using ordinary Titebond. I normally cut a tiny bit of relief into one face to keep the spacing between the two "bread" layers as narrow as possible, and to avoid crimping the leads.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Thomas A. Boatwright on December 23, 2009 at 10:55am: I encased my between two pieces of gaffer tape. Its like duct tape but my cloth like. It does a nice job of taken out extra noise. You cant hear a lot of hand movement when its actually playing.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Scott Winburn on December 26, 2009 at 9:23am: I've taken to building my piezos into the bridge. Sticking them anywhere on the box just amplifies way too much auxiliary noise... like the sound of my hand moving against the back side of the neck, or the sound of my shirt against the back of the box. I've found the embedding the piezo within the bridge not only gives me a louder sound, but greatly reduces box noises. I've done many different designs since this, but here is a step-by-step photo series of how i created my first one:

Old Crapper Guitar (click on "PDF: Piezo Sandwich")

-Scott; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Crow on December 26, 2009 at 4:41pm: you, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar!! it's guys like you that make this place great!!!

you make such beautiful works, and go on to show exactly how they're done!!!!

thanks so much, i'll have to try building this kind of bridge!

Scott Winburn said:
I've taken to building my piezos into the bridge. Sticking them anywhere on the box just amplifies way too much auxiliary noise... like the sound of my hand moving against the back side of the neck, or the sound of my shirt against the back of the box. I've found the embedding the piezo within the bridge not only gives me a louder sound, but greatly reduces box noises. I've done many different designs since this, but here is a step-by-step photo series of how i created my first one:

Old Crapper Guitar (click on "PDF: Piezo Sandwich")

-Scott; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jason Lambert on December 27, 2009 at 1:25pm: Scott, Thank you for the detailed PDF of your piezo bridge. I will be doing this soon.

Scott Winburn said:
I've taken to building my piezos into the bridge. Sticking them anywhere on the box just amplifies way too much auxiliary noise... like the sound of my hand moving against the back side of the neck, or the sound of my shirt against the back of the box. I've found the embedding the piezo within the bridge not only gives me a louder sound, but greatly reduces box noises. I've done many different designs since this, but here is a step-by-step photo series of how i created my first one:

Old Crapper Guitar (click on "PDF: Piezo Sandwich")

-Scott; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Fergus Morris on December 29, 2009 at 1:32pm: That is good! Can't imagine how I'd do it without a dremel though!

Scott Winburn said:
I've taken to building my piezos into the bridge. Sticking them anywhere on the box just amplifies way too much auxiliary noise... like the sound of my hand moving against the back side of the neck, or the sound of my shirt against the back of the box. I've found the embedding the piezo within the bridge not only gives me a louder sound, but greatly reduces box noises. I've done many different designs since this, but here is a step-by-step photo series of how i created my first one:

Old Crapper Guitar (click on "PDF: Piezo Sandwich")

-Scott; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Scott Winburn on December 30, 2009 at 12:48am: Put a piece of tape on a drill bit to mark the dept you want... then drill holes all over the piezo area, as close to each other as you can without the bit slipping into the previous hole. Then use a chisel or flat-head screwdriver to chip out the remaining wood.

Fergus Morris said:
That is good! Can't imagine how I'd do it without a dremel though!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Fergus Morris on January 3, 2010 at 8:37am: I managed to make one by cutting a piezo to make it smaller and hollowing out the wood with a 1 inch drill bit.

Not at all hard to do, thanks. Scott Winburn said:
Put a piece of tape on a drill bit to mark the dept you want... then drill holes all over the piezo area, as close to each other as you can without the bit slipping into the previous hole. Then use a chisel or flat-head screwdriver to chip out the remaining wood.

Fergus Morris said:
That is good! Can't imagine how I'd do it without a dremel though!; ▶ Reply to This