Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Roosterman on March 1, 2009 at 7:39am

While we are on with the electrics - are 2 piezos better than one???

Permalink Reply by bairfoot cajun on March 1, 2009 at 8:21am

i think that would be a great idea, i have intended to mix a piezo in with pole pickups soon, so if you use the 5-way switch you should be able to make this work with no problems,but the pole pickups will be more powerful than the piezo so when you switch to the piezo by itself you volume will drop considerably,just a note from my experiences.my set up will be a single coil and a piezo combination with a pot to be able to roll into the piezo or single coil as i see fit and get various tones that way.it is a simple set up.the pot has three legs on it so the hot from the input goes on the center leg and the hot from the piezo goes on one outer leg and the hot from the single coil goes on the other outer leg, the ground from each pickup goes on the base or back of the pot then i will ground the bridge to the base of the pot and put an on-off switch before the input jack. it will be a neat set up.use your idea with the strat type set up and replace one single coil with humbucker and replace one other single coil with piezo and that should work. try it and see,if you have any problems you can fix them if you study it a while.good ideas are worth the time and effort to institute them.

Permalink Reply by Roosterman on March 1, 2009 at 11:06pm

Great stuff Brian. I didn't consider the volume problem with the piezo having had no experience with them... maybe some sort of preamp between the piezo and the pot? Though I think your idea of a 'blend' sounds a whole lot neater, not to mention less of a headache!
I'll have a play with it when I get my parts list together - never know, there might be a simple solution such as dropping the coil through the body a bit further. Or, depending on the difference in tone, I might try using a piezo inside and one on the face outside, on a 3 way switch... so many things to experiment with, so little time!
In the meantime Im off to put a tone and volume on my three string!
Many thanks for your help again Brian

Permalink Reply by bucky on March 4, 2009 at 11:57am

There may be a way to connect the single coil or humbucker to the pot and have the piezo wired through the 3-way directly to the jack. I always had the impression that to get good volume or tone pot response from a piezo is much tougher than using the controls on your amp. I recently wired a humbucker on my last cbg to a push/pull pot that allows me to switch from single coil to humbucker and it was much easier than I thought it would be.
My next project is to wire a single humbucker to a 5-way super switch that will allow you to go from a humbucker to a single coil to humbucking in phase and out of phase, essentialy getting five different sounds from a single humbucking pick-up. There are a number of great ideas and wiring diagrams on guitarelectronics.com if you want to experiment, but not any info on piezo wiring. Good luck to you and let us know how everything goes with the 3-way switch.