Comment

Comment by Tom "Broken E String" Sobieski on August 31, 2012 at 4:54am

Rod piezos are, in my opinion, a step up, but also take more work to make proper use of.

and what would that "more work" consist of?

Comment by PhilUSAFRet on August 31, 2012 at 3:58am

Had a guy that sells resonator cones and builds CBG resonators tell me you can glue a small piezo disc with a little silicone adhesive to the inside tip of the resonator cone.  Any experience with that?

Comment by Ben "C. B. Gitty" Baker on August 31, 2012 at 3:54am

We use disk piezos in a lot of our standard 3-string builds, encased in hot glue on the inside of the box lid, and the results are consistently good. Rod piezos are, in my opinion, a step up, but also take more work to make proper use of.

Comment by jamie bark on August 31, 2012 at 3:44am

I was thinking I probably didn't cover it enough with the hot glue... I will re-do it this weekend and use silicone. Thanks for the tips. I thought about buying piezo's in bulk too, but thought I might want to change it up on some other builds... i have some strings I bought in bulk before trying them out though... live and learn. lol

Comment by Jim Olean (JimO) on August 31, 2012 at 1:59am

I have tried double sided tape to soften the attachment to sound board then incasing the piezo in hot melt glue allowing the glue to run in around the edges of piezo. Seems to cool it some.  I bought bulk piezo ' s so, when I run out of my seemingly endless supply of piezo' s, I am going to switch to rod piezo s. 

Comment by Rand Moore on August 31, 2012 at 1:32am

"son;t"  should be "don't". Sorry for the typo.

Comment by Rand Moore on August 31, 2012 at 1:31am

Hi James.

You son;t want a hard bonding type of glue if you are trying to isolate a piezo pickup. You need something that kind of absorbs vibrations to eliminate the handling and fingering noise, As an alternative to hot glue, silicon seal or caulking compound could also be used.

-Rand.

Comment by James Shelton on August 31, 2012 at 12:53am

Has anyone used 2 part epoxy (instead of hot glue)  to coat and attach a piezo?

Comment by Rand Moore on August 31, 2012 at 12:47am

Hi Jamie Bark,
In the past I also had lots of problems with piezo pickups. They tend to be way too sensitive, and the trick is to make them less sensitive. I read up on the subject here on CBN, and decided to try the "hot glue and bottle cap" approach, and had pretty good results. Much better than my previous attempts. What I did (following someone else's advice (sorry, I don't recall who offered the advice) I used a hot gun to melt hot glue into a bottle cap (a Coca-Cola bottle cap in my case), filing the cap about half way up. I let the hot glue "pool" so that the surface was level, and once it cooled I put the piezo pick-up on it. The piezo I used was 2cm (20mm) wide which I got thru CB Gitty. The larger radio shack buzzer piezos can be used, but they are too big for a bottle cap. Maybe a juice bottle cap, or something else could be used for them. Anyways, once the glue has cooled, I put the piezo pickup in the middle of the cap, making sure it would not touch the edge of the bottle cap, and then I filled the rest of the bottle cap with hot glue. After that cooled (dried), I put a big dab of hot glue on the face side of the bottle cap and glued it to the underside of the sound board making sure to stay clear of my neck (in my neck thru CBG). I held it in place until it stuck. Then drilled a hole for the jack and wired (soldered) everything up. After finishing the instrument, stringing it up and tuning it, I took it over to my Amp and was pleasaantly surprised that it did not pick up all the "finger and handling" noise that my first couple of electric instruments suffered from. But, it still sounds a bit "flat", which I suspect may be the cigar box. I build the sound box for most my instruments using a 2mm thick plywood veneer which consistently sound better than my cigar box guitar instruments. So, I'm thinking of changing out the sound board to 2mm plywood veneer. Unfortunately, I'll have to engineer it to fit right as a replacement for the current 3/16" thick lid.
-Rand.

Comment by wormil on August 25, 2012 at 8:53am

Jamie, I've tried several brands of strings and they all sound about the same. The only real difference was that the Ernie Balls snapped easily. The volume is in the volume of the box for an acoustic. Don't have enough experience with piezo's to help, I've done two, both bought from Radio Shack and they are plenty loud for me.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 190
• 191
• 192
• 193
• 194
• …
• 300
• Next ›
• Page