![]() The thing is that back shield is glued to actual pickup with rubber spacer in between on the copper edge not touching working pickup crystal layer - it sounds much better when nothing is touching it. Two of them glued togheter like a sandwich: 1st is for pickup, 2nd - as a back shield (crystal layer not connected, copper grounded). For pick-ups i used chinese 30mm cheap piezo. Also changed some resistor values for bax equaliser for my taste, made the circuit run from 48v phantom mic input and 8:1 chinese transformer (which turned out to be pretty clean and flat) for tl072 output. i didn't use input capacitor so thers like 1 volt I build "charge amplifier" piezo preamp (for upright piano standing right near the loud drumset) from elliot sound website. I use this to run my Roland VG-99 which I also used for acoustic guitars many years. I also have installed a Roland GK hex pickup in one of the Taylors and a similar piezo based hex pickup system from Richard McClish/RMC RMC Pickups installed in a Lowden guitar. This system has 3 small piezos in parallell and a small condenser to be able to blend in a little more acoustic sound. I guess Fishman has similar sytems and I have installed a system from K&K in a key fiddle that works very well. ![]() I have this system in a beautiful handbuild guitar, but I rearly use this instrument live. L.R Baggs has a dual system with piezo and a small condenser as described further up called L.R. But you also need some kind of blend control between the IR sound and the direct piezo sound so I have not looked into this yet. ![]() ![]() I suspect I could have made IR responses for my different instruments and could have them automatic loaded with different presets for different instruments. I have a Boss GT1000 that I also use for my acoustic instruments which have the possibility to load IR speaker responses. But its to stressfull to bend down and change prestes each time I change instrument (which I do all the time.) during a concert while I also have to talk, retune a guitar and etc. These products can get a piezo system sound very close to a condenser in front of your instrument. I also have a IR system - Audio Sprockets tone dexter. It s a cheap Fishman system but works ok. I also have under saddle piezo in my octave mandolin (also called Irish bouzoki). I also have an older Taylor with an under saddle Fishman system and this has been my "work horse" guitar for many years. have two Taylors with the new piezo expression 2 system which sounds very good. But it works very well and is very feedback resistant. I have two Taylors with the first magnetic expression 1 system, liked them at first but got a little tired of the "a little bit too much electric sound". I use two Fishman Rare Earth on my weissenborns (one normal tuned in D and a barytone tuned in A) the have a little "electric" sound but works very well on the weissenborns and you can also have quite distorted sound and sound more like a lap steel. I have tried a lot of the magnetic soundhole pickups. I have been a gigging musician for 55 years an have tried most of piezo's (K&K, Fishman, LR Baggs, etc and have made my own several times from piezo transducers, and they work quite ok, and are almost free). I "forgive" you all for going outside my original question. Thank you for this wonderful discussion in an area I love. The bodies are basically resonators with a fundamental frequency and the tops have positive and negative phase signals all over so experimenting with pickup placement is a good idea - Chladni patterns of guitar plates ![]() Out of interest - here's a link to some research I found twenty years ago while researching guitar design. If the element is sat in the bass bridge I would recommend jamming it in somehow to get pressure on it, it really isn't the best place to pick up bass frequencies. It is the best compromise for stage work but isn't the true sound of the instrument. Indeed a Fishman element sits under the bridge saddle and relies on string pressure over the saddle (no pressure = no signal, and often uneven pressure hence bad string balance) as mentioned earlier they get their signal too early - they are part of the transfer between the saddle and the bridge, the sound then propagates into the top, this type of pickup ignores the timbre of the instrument body. The K&K type pickups are just little glue on limpets and usually three of them in parallel, each encapsulated on the back with epoxy - apologies I originally wrote in series but corrected the post within minutes, I meant parallel. ![]()
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