pickup questions

Hi Troy,

Your inquiry has been viewed 60 times before, but no one has tried to answer it. So, you might try to clarify your question. What's a "gitty bridge"? Does "gitty" mean "guitar" or "C.B.Gitty"? Are you asking about generic guitar bridges, or a specific bridge from C.B.Gitty? And maybe your question(s) need to be more specific.

The question of how to mount a rod piezo in a guitar bridge has been asked elsewhere on CBN, so as a starting place, you might use the CBN search engine (located in the upper right corner of each web page) and use key words like "rod piezo" and "bridge" and then read through the discussions that are returned.

In general, a guitar bridge, when used with a rod piezo has two parts, the saddle and the bridge (or base that holds the saddle). The rod piezo is placed along the bottom of the slot for the saddle in such a way as to make full contact with the saddle once the instrument is strung up. In this way, strumming the strings will cause the strings to vibrate, which pass through the saddle to the rod piezo and on to the underlying bridge, soundboard and sound box. What we're interested in is the vibrations at the rod piezo. The piezo pickup responds to these vibrations by converting them into a weak electric signal (measured in mV or milli-volts) by way of a phenomenon called the "piezo-electric affect". The resulting weak electric signal is then routed to a preamp and/or guitar amplifier to produce the sound we hear at the speaker.

There are simple circuit diagrams of how to wire up a piezo (or two) to a 1/4" phono jack, and articles on pre-amps used to match the high impedance output of piezo pickups to the low impedance inputs of guitar amps. There are also photos of how some builders have made their rod-piezo based CBGs. All of that information can be found on CBN using the search engine and the appropriate key words and a bit of persistence. If afterwards you have more specific questions, feel free to post them and we'll get back with you.

-Rand.

Replies

Rand Moore November 27, 2012 at 1:38am

Hi Troy,

Your inquiry has been viewed 60 times before, but no one has tried to answer it. So, you might try to clarify your question. What's a "gitty bridge"? Does "gitty" mean "guitar" or "C.B.Gitty"? Are you asking about generic guitar bridges, or a specific bridge from C.B.Gitty? And maybe your question(s) need to be more specific.

The question of how to mount a rod piezo in a guitar bridge has been asked elsewhere on CBN, so as a starting place, you might use the CBN search engine (located in the upper right corner of each web page) and use key words like "rod piezo" and "bridge" and then read through the discussions that are returned.

In general, a guitar bridge, when used with a rod piezo has two parts, the saddle and the bridge (or base that holds the saddle). The rod piezo is placed along the bottom of the slot for the saddle in such a way as to make full contact with the saddle once the instrument is strung up. In this way, strumming the strings will cause the strings to vibrate, which pass through the saddle to the rod piezo and on to the underlying bridge, soundboard and sound box. What we're interested in is the vibrations at the rod piezo. The piezo pickup responds to these vibrations by converting them into a weak electric signal (measured in mV or milli-volts) by way of a phenomenon called the "piezo-electric affect". The resulting weak electric signal is then routed to a preamp and/or guitar amplifier to produce the sound we hear at the speaker.

There are simple circuit diagrams of how to wire up a piezo (or two) to a 1/4" phono jack, and articles on pre-amps used to match the high impedance output of piezo pickups to the low impedance inputs of guitar amps. There are also photos of how some builders have made their rod-piezo based CBGs. All of that information can be found on CBN using the search engine and the appropriate key words and a bit of persistence. If afterwards you have more specific questions, feel free to post them and we'll get back with you.

-Rand.

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