My Uke bass project is almost done. I made the bridge with a coax piezo under the brass rod saddle but the output is almost not there at all. I tried a preamp and it was not really any better. I swapped out the coax for a six string rod piezo and now it has great output but sadly also has the same "touch sensitivity" you get with a piezo disc!? The bass uses the fat poly strings and has a small cigar box body so will really have to be amped to get much sound out of it. The rod picks up the strings but also any touching of the box, fret board or bridge. I'm looking for advice or ideas on how to make it better. The Kala Ubass uses a Shadow pickup that has 4 piezos in it and a segmented saddle. I'm wondering if making something like that would help or just be a lot of work and sound like a simple disc under the box top?
Picture of the Shadow pickup. and picture of my bridge.
Thanks for the help!
Replies
If you can get E A loud or D G loud by moving one piezo rod, then you should be able to get each string over a node by using two piezo rods (EA on one and DG on the other) and cut off the overlap so they lie flush. It should be quick to do and you can wire up the prewired cables and avoid messing around with individual nodes.
Thank you. I'm going to try a corian saddle and the coax again and if that does not work I'll go with two rods cut, great solution.
I never tried using 2 rods as i think it wouldn`t matter, only thing i can see that using the 2 would be a more stable platform for the saddle to set on. But if you make the bridge / saddle the correct way then you wouldn`t need 2 rods. But i could be wrong....lol good luck !
I was thinking 2 rods with the nodes staggered... and whatever you use to sit on them wide on the bottom and narrowed up to bridge width on top.... I've never tried it but then I'm new to all this stuff.
Maybe if you go with a beefer bridge / saddle, like this one i did for a bass guitar build order. I used a full rod piezo in this one. Customer said it works awesome.
These work better - the whole of the piezo rod/flexible cable picks up equally so you don't have to put strings directly over the piezo wafers like on the stiff rods
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Guitar-Saddle-Piezo-Bridge-Pickup-Soft-Fo...
UPDATE: I swapped out the 6 string rod piezo for Uke piezo rod w/ 4 piezos on it and made a snug fitting maple saddle. This is a huge improvement but still not as nice as I'd like. I have balance issues now. Both acoustically and with either of the other piezos the D and G strings were quite a bit louder than the E and A strings. I have a larger than UKE string spacing at the bridge due to the fat strings so the strings do not line up directly over the piezo nodes on the rods.(either of them and why I went with the coax in the first place) I shifted the placement of the rod so that the E and A strings line up better with the nodes than the D and G strings, hoping that it would provide a more balanced output when amped. Now the E and A really boom and the D and G are weak by comparison. This project has gotten quite complicated but so far seems like it is going to be "Wicked" if I can get these fine tuning issues worked out. I'm playing it through a preamp /eq (the cheap one from Gitty) into an Ampeg 25W/8" bass amp.
SO, now I'm wondering if anyone has a suggestion or, if anyone has ever successfully cut one of the rod piezo units into individual piezo nodes? Cause if I can do that and move each node directly under the string I think it will be about as good as I can get it within budget.
Thanks to you all for the help!
I'm just thinking out loud here, plus I'm only just getting started at all this stuff, but would it work to use two rods and stagger them to have the vibrations averaged out??
bridge 2.JPG
bridge3.JPG
Try using corian or a denser wood for the saddle, that might help some.
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