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Dual piezo wiring: in series or in parallel?

I'm working on a license plate resonator guitar with two piezo pick-ups. The piezos are super glued to the back side of the plate, either side of the bridge.

This guitar also has a CB Gitty 3 pole, prewired, dual humbucker pick-up installed. I plan to use a 3-way switch to switch between the piezos, the humbucker or both. I'll have a volume knob for each pick-up and a tone knob for the humbucker only.

I would like the volume output from the piezos to be approximately the same as the humbucker volume output. So my question is: should I wire the two piezos in parallel as normal or in series for more voltage?

I can add more piezos in series for more voltage or in series-parallel for more oomph. What has been your experience?

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on January 17, 2019 at 8:36am

Always remember that sound/tone results vary according to the user. We all have different ideas of what is good or bad. So you get ideas about things, but you have to try them to find out if you like it or not and you may get different results in different guitars.

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Permalink Reply by Martin Simpson on February 11, 2019 at 6:40pm

Here's the pictures that I promised. As you can see, it is just quick and dirty construction.

The disks marked P are in parallel and the ones marked S are in series. The toggle switch selects one or the other, or both.

When the box is closed and plugged into an amp, it makes a good pickup for acoustic instruments. I put the but end of my canjo on it and played it like a stand-up bass. Sounded pretty good. It also sounded good when I layed a ukulele on it and played do-bro style. But the best sound was when I put a kalimba on top.

I'm betting it would work well with a lap harp too.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on February 12, 2019 at 7:16am

That's cool and a good idea.

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