Hello everyone, this is my first post here at CBN, although I've read through quite a few threads here.
Yesterday I decided to build some surface mount piezos for an archtop I have, the plan being to wire the output to the existing one so I could blend the transducers and the p90 already installed. My problem is while testing, ( soldered to its own output jack for test purposes) the pickups are VERY quiet, I had to turn my 40A tube amp up to 100% to get loud volumes out of them, they sounded fine but are unuseable due to this volume issue. Second test, I plugged them into a di box into garage band. Again way too quiet to be useable, even with all settings maxed. (not a good start) I used small disks inside on beer caps encased in silicone, audio cable from some old pedal connector cables, a 500k pot. Another test I did was to remove all insulation from the disk and I mounted it directly to the surface of the guit. louder. but still unuseable. Any sugestions? did I chose the wrong disks? wrong pot? any help could be VERY helpful on the matter. Thanks guys/gals.
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I've undone everything, and wired all three straight to input jacks and they are as loud as can be. Wood like to have them going through the. Plume pots though. Amy help?
By the sound of that Aaron, it seems your wiring of the pots is wrong, unless in the very unlikely case of 3 non functional pots. Are you running the pots in series to one jack? Or 3 individual pots in parallel to the jack? Either way, just add 1 pot and piezo at a time to narrow it down a bit, their might be a need for diodes on each hot wire before the jack to stop signal returning to other pots and piezo's, but i've never had that issue in duel piezo git's i''ve done
Have you tried de soldering the volume and testing the signal from just one of piezos ?
I would do this in this situation
that will be my next test. thanks.
That wire doesn't look right. What guage is it. It seems way too thick. The right guage and material makes a difference.
the wire isnt really thick at all, its just the rubber insulation, they are pedal to pedal cords...
When soldering, make sure your wires are pre tinned. You put a drop of solder onto the piezo disc. Then you set the tinned wire on the drop and put the soldering iron on top,of that until,the wire dropps into the solder drop. Then quickly remove the iron.
You have to be careful the solder does not go from the brass exterior to the white center.
The white center is your positive. Brass exterior is negative.
On preamps, with disc piezo they are more used for impedance matching than for gain. The discs are much higher impedance than a standard pickup. You get a much better sound.
The Tillman preamp is a classic. It only has 7 parts. You may have a problem getting the transistor for it locally. It is obsolete and not everyone carries it. There is also a quick and dirty preamp by Francis Deck. I have built this one and it works. I was able to buy all the parts locally. It only has 6 parts.
hey folks thanks for the replys, I assumed (wrongly) that I didnt need a preamp,when using a firewire sound interface, as if that WAS the preamp. I will probably try and build a simple preamp next. These are my first builds, and Im having a fun time doing so. Also just curious, Ive seen acoustic guitar built in preamps, but as far as pedal preamps, is this one, I know its not the most reputable brand, but they are cheap. http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/ADI21.aspx, thanks again!
Try a Tillman FET pre-amp. Google it for build instructions. You could either build it into the guitar (requires a 9v battery), or into a separate box, but in any case, blending with mag pickups may be difficult. You may want to consider a separate jack for the piezos to go to a separate amp channel.
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