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  • MichaelS Country Boy Guitars June 8, 2012 at 11:57am

    Piezo is about the cheapest way to go, unless you get a free mag pickup from someone's stash of used pickups.  If done right a piezo can sound very good, not better not worse just different than a mag pickup. 

  • L.J. June 8, 2012 at 11:56am

    I hate 99.9% of piezos when it comes to tone and overall performance. If not going Mag Pickup and Nickel strings. I would buy from someone like Ted Crocker or Randy Bretz. They have pretty good stuff going on if you like the idea of piezos. I have never tried nickel strings on a piezo before. Because they are so much quieter than a phospher bronze. The best sounding Piezo I ever heard on a cbg was a Ted Crocker Flatbed? Its a piezo embedded in a wood block bridgepiece, and a brass rod floating on top.

  • Hip Bone Bellaire June 7, 2012 at 11:37am

    Piezo disks also make the entire box live.. So tap the box or move your hands the box will pick it up...

  • Darren Wolbold June 7, 2012 at 6:44am

    I use Piezo disks about 25mm diameter you can get them on ebay, some people also take apart piezoelectric buzzers

    I usually use two in parallel but you can use one and it will work.

    I glue them down to the neck in the bridge area with epoxy resin and also glue a thin bit of wood ontop to dampen them a bit as they push out a lot of signal and feed back can be an issue

    This is an example of what they can sound like

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8ANv1W4b7M

    check my CBG blog out if you get time I will hopfully be doing a bit on pickups in the future

    http://darrenscigarboxguitars.blogspot.co.uk/

    • Evan Zadd > Darren Wolbold June 8, 2012 at 7:05am
      Good advice! I couldn't get on your blog page. It came up as an error on the page. FYI. I'd love to see it so let me know
  • Bad Finger (Eric) June 7, 2012 at 5:08am
    Just add a Klangbox flat pickup and a jack. Assuming you have a reasonable action you might not need to make much of any modification to an existing acoustic guitar.
    • Bad Finger (Eric) > Bad Finger (Eric) June 7, 2012 at 8:36am

      I should have also said the requisite electric strings if you want to go magnetic.  I've done both piezo and magnetic.  Piezos are cheap at under a buck, but in my opinion, the sound quality of a magnetic pickup is so much more worth the time and extra bucks.

      Examples for the same guitar acoustic:

      http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/the-result-of-my-practice-over

      With piezo:

      http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/some-easy-riffs-on-el-segundo

      With Klangbox Flat Pickup, electric strings.  Amp adds a little gain and reverb:

      http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/elmar-s-da-man

      Just one example.  Your mileage may vary.

      • Evan Zadd > Bad Finger (Eric) June 7, 2012 at 2:17pm

        I really like the sound of the Klangbox flat pickup! Thanks for the input

        • Bad Finger (Eric) > Evan Zadd June 7, 2012 at 4:04pm

          Thanks.  Glad I could give you one straight comparison between all three sounds on the same guitar.  It's a world of difference.

          The flat pickups are nice because you can just stick or glue them on the lid without cutting anything.  Just drill a little hole for the lead wires, add a jack and you're making noise.

          With my guitar, I found that I don't have to ground the bridge or strings.  I tried it that way first, but got some odd buzzing.  Probably a bad ground connection to the strings.  But it plays just fine without the extra attachment.

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