Hello Cigarboxnation, I'm hauling my ass off in my first 3 stringed cbg build. I'm having some trouble with the wiring though. I'm going for: A jack connected to my piezo pickup with both tone control and volume control.

Ive got 2 potentiometers, 250k and 10k ohm. I have my jack output, my 0.022 uf capacitor, and my piezo ready with both lead and ground.

I have made a ground circuit from my jack to the volume pot to the tone pot. I have connected my jack lead to the volume pot, i have grounded 1 leg from the volume pot to itself, and i have connected my capacitor to the tone pot, from the third leg. This leaves me with an unconnected piezo, and 3 free legs.

How do i proceed?

My common sense says i also need to connect me tone pot to my volume pot with a lead? am i on track? I hope you can help.

I have some pictures here. http://imgur.com/a/RHFIh

I've already posted this to /r/luthier but with no luck. I hope u guys, the masters of the cbg can help me out.

Kind regards Alex

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These seymour duncan links should work for you. Piezo is the same a single coil, use the lower left guitar drop down menu here if the wiring diagram link doesn't work.

wiring digram:

http://d2pzqzfqz0w13y.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/1S_...

menu page:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/wiring-diagrams?meta_params=guitar-opt...

Thank you very much the diagram is very easy to read, thanks alot :)

No problem! It's a great site for wiring diagrams. Usually have one of their pages up when I'm finishing a project even if I don't need it. Hope your build is going well!

Oh Sean it really is, i just right now soldered the remaining joints, and stuck the piezo on my regular electric guitar and plugged my amp in, and i actually heard sound, plus both pots were working, the tone pot however wasn't very clear to hear different from open to closed "hmmm". Oh and the feedback was terrible though, but i should be able to come up with a solution! hahah

Try mounting the piezo in a metal bottle or can cap, and then wax potting it a little. Some folks use glue to pot it as well. I mostly use pickups, other here will have more info.

The tone cap you're using doesn't roll off a lot of treble, .022 is the smallest normally used in guitars. Try an .047, those are my go to unless I'm doing a high gain metal guitar (then .022) or want it to get really really dark (.073, .1).

Wider results with 250k for both pots as well. I tend to stick to 500k, and CTS brand cuz they're the best. Alpha's and Bourne's to me are acceptable, and I don't use cheap ass pots ever.

^^^^^This^^^^^^

I've never had a mini pot that was worth a dang.

Found this in the groups forum.

Why did you decide to use those value pots and cap?

I dunno man i just had em laying around, my capacitor seems quite big in size aswell, it says 2000 volts on it seems like a lot. And yes the wiring diagram i noticed the different between the diagram and mine is on the tone pot i mounted my cap on the left leg, and the hot to the middle. Meaning i switched around the left to legs on the tone pot, does it mean anything??

I just wired with common sense to make a ground circuit and a hot circuit. Surprising my guess was kinda spot on except the cap placement, haha you never know.

Also I don't know if you've noticed my jack isn't the standard 1/4 3,5mm, its a 1/8 2,5mm, so i used an adapter i also had laying around. I don't think it's gonna make a big different in sound, it's a bit inconvenient though.

It's the uF rating that determines the treble roll off. A tiny .1 ceramic cap will give you muddy as you want, but a Veinna Sausage sized .022 won't. :)

Nothing wrong with using what you have sitting around. But if you use junk to start, you'll limit how good your electronics will sound. Which can be / is also a valid aesthetic - see how lo-fi you can go. Using adapters is the same. There's Switchcraft jacks, and there's various degrees of very good to decent to absolute crappiness.

A huge part of what I love with my CBG's is getting lo fi sounds through using a high gain fuzz or overdrive pedal that gets interesting textures when you roll off your guitar's volume knob. And running whatever manner of amp through boombox-stereo-computer speakers.

Do what you can with what you got and what you like! 

Yes okay, but as i apparently have a bunch of these 2000 volts, 0.022uf laying around. Would it be possible to connected 2x .022uf in serial to get .044uf, and thereby double the roll off as i'm disliking the amount being rolled off at .022uf.

Also my 250k actually works surprisingly well. When shut all sound is gone, and when open its quite good. But would a change from 250k to 500k mean a decrease in feedback?

I believe you have to wire the caps in parallel to double the value, can't remember for sure. I think that you would benefit from having a higher value tone pot.

I did a google search on tone circuits for piezo's and was lead to a discussion on this site and the consensuses of that discussion was that passive tone circuits was a waste of time and that a good preamp with a equalizer was best.

I would wire in a 500k volume pot straight to the jack(no tone circuit) and change to a 1meg pot if you don't like that. Or get a preamp.

Feedback comes not from the volume pot, but from the piezo picking up the speaker output.  You have to "Bury" the piezo so it can't hear anything but the GIT.  some folks put it between the bridge and the face so there is wood on both sides, some folks put a cleat of wood over it on the inside to do the same thing, some folks use layers of hot glue on both sides of the piezo to 'insulate it' from ambient noise so only the vibrations from the GIT's wood reaches it.  Browse around this site and you'll find a lot of ideas on how to put the piezo in so that it hears only the GIT and not the amp's speaker...

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