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Dual Piezo Wiring

Please forgive me if I'm dredging up old common knowledge, but, I was just reading on CB Gitty's pages about wiring piezos and need some clarification. Ben was explaining that wiring in parallel means you have 4 wires, two from each piezo going to the jack.I thought it had more to do with how you connect the piezos to each other. Is it not true that if you wire red to red and white to white it would be parallel and if you wire red to white and white to red (pos. and neg. I guess) it would be in series? In either case , you would only have two wires going to the jack? Or am I arguing semantics?

Thank you for your help.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Willmouth on May 25, 2012 at 10:03am

To wire in parallel, solder the like colored wires to the same post on the jack or pot (or ground). I don't think that you would want to try to wire them in series, although that might work (that would be one wire soldered to a post, the other wire soldered to one of the wires on the other piezo, with the other free wire going to the other free post on a jack). The problem with wiring in series, is if one piezo went out then the other would not work. But when you wire in parallel, if one stops the other will still work.

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Permalink Reply by BT Cohosh on May 25, 2012 at 12:31pm

Mike's got the wiring absolutely right. I've wired piezos in both series and parallel circuits. Series wiring seems to cut output and deaden feedback; parallel wiring gives more headroom--tends to be "hotter", if that makes any sense.

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Permalink Reply by Bluesheart on May 26, 2012 at 1:36am

It makes sense but everything I've read hear about seem to say it is the other way around, that series makes it "hot" and parallel makes it"not". Did I miss something.?

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on May 26, 2012 at 3:14am

generally ur right about the 'hot' and 'not' business mate..

bear in mind that piezos are already waaaaaay too 'hot'

as for what ur missing...

two words...

load impedance..

just as with speakers, combining in series will increase load impedance, wiring in parallel will reduce it...

Ted Crocker once linked me to a very interesting study in which it was found that 7 is the magic number, up to seven piezos are conncted in parallel before a second set (of up to seven) is added in series with it..

i forget where it is, but if you ask him at clubhouse in chat, he'll prolly link you to it

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Permalink Reply by Mike Willmouth on May 26, 2012 at 11:28am

Wiring in series would decrease the hotness because you are creating more resistence -- thus impeding the signal flow. Wiring in parallel creates no additional resistence -- thus less impedance and more hotness (equals louder everything).

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Permalink Reply by Bluesheart on May 29, 2012 at 9:14am

Wow, OK. Just makes me realize how little I know about electronics! Maybe I need to break out the soldering iron and see what happens! Thank you all for the advice!