Hiya guys, Just joined the site today,still trying to find my way around so I hope this lands in the right section. My million dollar Question??? How can I stop my cigar box guitar from feeding back? Built 3 guitars all with piezo pickups, every one screams its head of just like a Banshee!!! Is it me or just the way I constructed the instrument? Would I be better installing normal single coil pickups instead of the piezos? Any advice would be great. Looking forward to some feedback <excuse the pun> ha ha.
Thanks guys
Replies
Hello
I covered some stuff on what I do to stop feed back on my blog
Thought you might like to see
http://darrenscigarboxguitars.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/taming-piezo-p...
I had many problems with feedback from piezos and piezo rod pickups when i was experimenting with them but use humbuckers now. The problem is that the feedback "field" is most sensitive when the pickup is close to the amp, and increases dramatically as the volume goes up, making piezos only really practical for home playing, unless you don't mind standing 10-15 feet away!
I bought a new Amp last year, a Marshall ASD50D Acoustic amp fitted with an anti- feedback control that really works well if you want to play at high volumes close to the amp...and sounds great with Flatpup 4 humbuckers too (-:
,
Turn the amp around so it is not facing the CBG?
I would say with some work piezzios can be used in a high amplification situation ie on stage and many people do.
but you need to definitely work on taming them
I go for two in parallel and mount them on the neck near the bridge but on the opposite side. I also dampen them by gluing a thin layer of wood on top
seams to do the trick and make the guitar viable for stage work.
Any guitar will feed back at some point so you are never going to get red of it totally. I would say if you do the above and you have experince (or your rodies or sound man) of using and amping an acousic guitar you will be in familiar territory
check my blog out
http://darrenscigarboxguitars.blogspot.co.uk/
Hi. Do I have to use a rod as saddle if I put the piezo inside the bridge? Isn't it ok if I use wood or plastic?
I have been putting a rod PU in the bridge / saddle. I make a cut in the bridge w/ my radial arm saw - the 1/8" kerf is the right size to drop in the rod cut to 3 or 4 "bumps" & I put a slice of corian above it, still in the slot , for the saddle. A huge improvement from the disk PU in my opinion. Greatly reduced handling noise & much better bass. I don't think it picks up as much of the box resonance though.
For 5 wires: Green - Live, Red/White- Split tap, Black/ Braided- Earth
Hi Derek
You have a bare wire that is the shielding and this goes to ground - the other 4 are from the 2 coils which colour code varies depending upon the humbucker manufacturer.
(From Seymour Duncan http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/)
Also for axesrus humbuckers
Wiring - Red = Live, Black & Silver = Ground, Green & white = Coil Tap (Joined for normal operation)
Giovanni
Wiring - Green = Live, Black & Silver = Ground, Red & white = Coil Tap (Joined for normal operation)
Once you know the wiring - the hot wire goes to the jack socket lug that will contact the tip of the jack plug and the earth to the one which will contact the shaft (if you look at the jack socket with the jack plugged in it is easy to see which is which)
Have you thought of doing a coil tap so you can have series/split/parallel options?
You can also substitute the piezo in place of a magnetic pickup on the wiring diagrams so you can have both piezo and magnetic options on the cigar box. (For ideas the Seymour Duncan wiring diagrams are worth a look).
Regards
David
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