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Permalink Reply by JL on June 9, 2016 at 2:38am

Assuming there is some sort of through-neck/brace inside the gourd, a piezo should work fine glued to that instead.

for pre-amp, this is a perfect use of Shane's external pre-amp design.

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/forum/topics/easy-diy-pre-amp-makes-p...

drop a cb gitty preamp into a cigar box, route an in-jack to the piezo of the input side, output side jack to the amp, you're set.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Morris on June 11, 2016 at 3:27pm

Hey Barry, good to see you on here. Good advice from JL. I'd experiment with the piezo on the through brace and on the inner gourd body too. I'm thinking the gourd itself might vibrate more than the dowel but that's just me guessing. The external pre amp mentioned simply uses the one you ordered mounted to a box and the piezo jack would plug in to it. Depending on your gourd's shape - some of mine are pretty flat on the bottom - the pre amp could be mounted there but then the player's belly button might mess with the controls! I'm interested to see what you come up with.

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Permalink Reply by Barry Sholder on June 12, 2016 at 2:44am

you know I'm beginning to wonder if an onboard preamp is going to be right because of the size of hole I will need to make to fit it. Is there an external box that uses and in and out  that isnt $100+ ?

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Permalink Reply by Jim Morris on June 12, 2016 at 4:12am

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/forum/topics/easy-diy-pre-amp-makes-p...

Here's the homemade one Shane S posted I think it's the same link as the one JL posted above. Should be pretty easy to do.

Hmm, it'd be cool to mount it in a seperate gourd rather than a cigar box just to keep with the gourd theme!

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Permalink Reply by Barry Sholder on June 12, 2016 at 4:25am

great idea. I wonder if I could take the one thats coming and use it in a small cannonball gourd...about the size of a shotput. I just hole the electronics arewnt to complicated. I can solder but thats it.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Morris on June 12, 2016 at 6:58am

That would very likely work.That's about where I'm at with electronics - I can solder, I can wrap a wire with elec tape and just 2 days ago learned how to use a multimeter. Hopefully you checked out the video link which makes it pretty clear even for those of us who are way more comfortable with good ol' acoustic stuff.

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Permalink Reply by JL on June 13, 2016 at 2:40am

the electronics are easy, 1 input jack - cut the piezo wire and solder the leads, 1 output jack.

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