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  • Bad Finger (Eric) November 19, 2014 at 7:19am

    I put my 5-channel preamp (with 9V battery) EQ in a separate little cigar box with a 1/4" jack on the input side. It sits on the floor when I'm playing like a stomp box (but don't stomp on it!).  I use it for a few guitars that have either disc or rod piezos, but sometimes with my mag pups too.  I like to use it to boost my guitars that use Flatpups.  My daughter and I also use it a lot for the electric upright we built to shape the tone.  It uses a cable piezo.

    Between rod and disc piezos, I find that the discs need more tone adjustment than the rods, at least in my experience.  I can accept the tone from a rod piezo through my tube amp that has only volume control, but the discs sound worse, in my opinion.

  • Ron "Oily" Sprague November 17, 2014 at 3:03pm
    The purpose of a pre amp is to boost the voltage going into the amp. The reason for this is that piezos have a higher impedance than mag pups, and thus transmit lower voltages; most guitar amps are expecting a low impedance input such as you get with standard electric guitar mag pups. Which does not mean you can't run a piezo straight into a standard amp; plenty of people do. But if you do use a preamp, your piezo-equipped guitar will sound more "natural," or "acoustic." You will the also have the capability to tweak your tone for bass, mids and treble before sending the signal to the amp for further amplification. All of my commercial gits fitted with piezos (under-saddle rods, BTW) also have a pre amp circuit powered by an internal 9V battery.
  • Will King November 17, 2014 at 11:59am

    I buy my passive pre-amps for my ukes from www.Suntekstore.com, search for pickup and on the 1st page you click on EG 2 Band....., and then you will see the Item# 15007359 at the top.  They are $8.02 each with free shipping.  They even work good with my cat bowl resonator ukes.  Very good clear sound.  I try to get a lot of pressure on the saddle by keeping a good string angle.

  • Jim Woods November 17, 2014 at 10:54am

    I do not use a pre-amp for my rod piezo builds when I am using a guitar amp ( Fender mustang ).  Sounds fine to my untrained ear.

    My Cigar Box amps have a pfet preamp in the circuit.

  • Will King November 10, 2014 at 10:26am

    I ALWAYS buy a pre-amp for my rod piezo setups on the ukes & mandolins.  The amped sound is very real and the pre-amp gives me lots of control without having to reach down and change things on the amp.  Never tried it with pots with no controls, so I am not sure that it wouldn't work just fine.

  • Randy S. Bretz November 10, 2014 at 10:01am

    I never have

  • robert jones November 10, 2014 at 8:23am

    I'm going to second Scott on this one.

  • Scott aka Farmer Ted November 10, 2014 at 7:52am

    Much debate about this topic, but if I were using a rod piezo, I would include a preamp. 

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