Hey gents -

I'm just finishing up my second build and spent a good part of the day messing about with a disc piezo. The wires that came off of them are extremely thin and today had me:

1) Installing one between 3M tape and then to the inside of the box under the low string, right below the bridge only to find I crushed the ceramic disc after pressing it between the foam tape. I read of this method on a blog...

2) Installing it in a bottle cap (looks very cool), but the solder joints on the thin piezo wire failed. Followed a YouTube video for this one (filled the cap with hot glue, etc.)

3) Tried the bottle cap method again because I liked the look of it so much, got my wiring sorted out (finally) and plugged her in, but...

Is it normal to have to really crank up the volume to get any decent sound from these pickups? I have mine mounted in the cap, surrounded with hot glue, no voids and then glued tight to the inside of the box, right below the bridge on the lowest string.

I know setups are subjective, but for comparison, my first build has a mini-humbucker and I can turn my little Fender tube amp to about 2 in the living room, v/c on the guitar full on, and she throws some good sound.

With the disc piezo, v/c full-on, I had the amp to 4 and it sounded 'ok' but kind of anemic... definitely not fired up about the sound. Also, at '4', theres noticeable hum.

Am I missing something? Expecting too much?

I'm tempted to scrap the piezo and put a mini-humbucker in there; the unfortunate part is that I put a sound hole / screen near the top front corner, so the new pickup could only go dead-centre where box art is - shame to cut that away.

If I am expecting too much from this round piezo, how does a bridge piezo compare? Can this setup be saved?

Thanks.

Mike

P.S. I'm running CBG 4-string Acoustic .034 - .013 with a wood bridge with bone.

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Wow Mike, i wouldn't go any where near a jointer with something as small as a bridge , you were a bit lucky, cbg's are known to be easy to get a tune out of, but fingers help in making it easy

Man, I know...! - and old enough to know better. I grabbed some 'chopstick' like scraps to try to guide it through and it suck into the blade almost instantly. I'm seriously eyeing up that shaper/sander for the drill-press at StewMac. I think it would lend itself to better consistenct on these small parts.

QUICK QUESTION - 

Before I glue this disc down, given the recent issues, would it be better to put a few dabs of glue around the perimeter of the disc to attach it to the box vs a thin smear of hot glue between the disc and the lid?

you can always gently re heat the glue to remove it, it's hard to suggest how much glue to use as each mount is different, but once you have it where it sounds best, a layer between it and the wood will soften handling noises, and any amount you put on the other side should not effect the string reading abilities, just other noises

Thanks Darryl. Used a thin smear and all seems to be ok. Now off to build a new bridge...

I invested in a benchtop belt & disk sanding station, and do a whole lot of my work on it, including shaping bridges, tail pieces, nuts, pegs, sanding down the sharp ends of frets and the sides of the fingerboard and neck, I've even made some drum sticks using the disk sander.

Hey JL - Good call. I was actually looking at one of those shaping setups from StewMac and wondered how good it was: http://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/Types_of_Tools/Jigs_and_Fixtur...

Do you have any tricks for sanding things evenly / level? I find it hard to get things perfectly level  / square when doing things like reducing bridge height.

Cheers.

I started with using my electric hand held belt sander upsidedown in the bench vice, then I got something like this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ryobi-120-Volt-Bench-Sander-Green-BD4601...

tips for even and level, sure.  Pressing hard will cause the leading edge to grind down faster, go easy with the pressure, do a little at a time,  flip ends/direction of the workpiece often, use the metal table and miter gauge if you need things square.

You do know that the piezo disc`s can be cut. I use the cut ones in my bone carved saddle bridges. I embed the disc in hot glue.

Hey Randy - awesome work man - the detail is incredible! No - I didn't know they could be cut. Can you shoot me a link to your site?

Here's an update of her plugged in... my thoughts on the piezo have changed now that I've pulled it out of the glue / bottle cap. Still curious how guys are getting decent sound from that setup.

probably gluing the piezo side of the cap instead of the thick glue side of the cap to the soundboard, just a guess...

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