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Pickup configuration question

Hi All, Happy Easter & happy hunkering down!

I'm almost ready to wire up a build with a Pawn Shop Monorail Single-Coil pup and facing a choice. To keep the Q & A short and simple, I'm only considering these two options and hoping someone can speak from experience. The pup will go in the neck position. I've been thinking about putting a rod piezo under the saddle and wiring them up to independent volumes to blend in and out across each other. Let's call this Plan A.

I've never tried a piezo/mag pup combo before. My Plan B would be to just go with the straight up pup with Vol & Tone and get the most out of what it has tone-wise. If I go s-coil only, I might throw an RC circuit on there to preserve the highs, but since I'm going for gritty, raw I might just leave it to go muddy when turning down the Volume. But the main question is Plan A piezo-saddle & mag s-coil neck or just the mag pup V & T.

If anyone's ever tried the combo I'd sure appreciate your experience. Health & Best to all!

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 12, 2020 at 10:49am

Wire them to their own volume and tone pots and then to a blend pot to jack. Switches can cause a popping sound due to impedance mixmatch.

Use pots of the same value because pots of different values will cause issues within the circuit. the pickup and piezo will only "see" the pot with the highest value.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 12, 2020 at 10:55am

Piezo in the bridge position will have a more treble sound than a neck position just like a pickup does. You can mount a rod piezo in the neck pocket between the neck and body to get a more balanced tone like a acoustic guitar if wanted.

A pickup in the middle position can get neck/middle/bridge tones with simple adjustments of the tone knob. Very versatile setup.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 12, 2020 at 10:59am

Rod piezos sound better than the round ones in my opinion and they have less impedance mismatch with magnetic pickups. They can make an excellent combo.

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Permalink Reply by Rough Cut Guitars on April 12, 2020 at 12:34pm

Thanks Paul! I hadn't thought about a piezo in the neck position I've just gone under saddle to 'pick up' the most direct transfer, but I can see what you're saying about getting a more acoustic tone. I'll try that on the next more acoustic build. For this one I decided to keep things simple and classic and just go with the magnetic pup. I had no reason to do the piezo combo - just a whim - and that's not a good enough reason to go through the trouble.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 13, 2020 at 9:52am

When I was making CBG's with the round piezos, I would put them in various places til I found a place I liked most. That usually ended up by the neck, but different strokes for different folks. LOL

Put the pickup in the neck for more bass-dark tones, bridge for more treble and highs or middle for more midrange. But good use of the tone pot can help with those other tones. Put your vol/tone pots on 7 and make your amp setting the way you want them. Then adjust those guitar pots high for bridge position tones and low for neck position tones.

Volume and tone pots are meant to be interactive and give versatility to your sound, but most people just turn everything up as high as they can. LOL