Doing Things Wrong

Electronics - Piezo

Projects utilizing piezo pickups and electronics.


This is the biggest of the Audiovoxes, weighing in at a full 12 pounds, with a 36" scale. The neck is a Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba) floorboard over maple, with a straight cutout headstock. There are over 100 marker dots. The body is veneered masonite over solid plywood, with Danelectro-style Tolex binding. There are also strap buttons, this instrument can be played vertically or horizontally.


This one is almost identical in construction to the Danelectro-style - masonite over chambered plywood body, masonite pickguard. The neck is purpleheart over maple, with plastic fret lines. The soundhole merely serves as a pickup mount, and the pickup was just insurance against never getting the intended piezo system to work. Eventually, I did get it to work, the piezo is incorporated in a modified bridge, and sounds great. 30" scale.


This bass is a 21" scale, with a piezo saddle mounted in an adjustable bridge. The soundhole is just for looks. The strings are metal-wound Kalas. The fretboard is cut out of the ugliest piece of wood I ever received. For such a small neck, I managed to cut around most of the ugly, and the result isn't half bad.


Built as a testbed for a number of ideas:


Hollow plywood body with Mighty Mite 34" neck. Graphtech Ghost piezo saddles with a backup soundhole-mounted magnetic pickup, active electronics.


21" neck, adjustable bridge with piezo saddle, active electronics. EBay body. Now has metal-wound strings.


The subject of capacitors in guitars is rife with fraud and nonsense. The fact is, the capacitor is not IN the signal path, it is very much OUT of it, and only has any effect when you select it, which is probably pretty seldom. The capacitor is part of a low-pass ( or rarely high-pass ) filter, basically a frequency-dependent leak to ground. It is not making 'tone', it is taking it away. The type of capacitor that you use for this really doesn't matter at all, as long as you don't use a polarized one the wrong way. Orange Drop, oil-in-paper, film, ceramic -- makes no difference. Anyone who claims it does either has a very vivid imagination or is trying to sell you something.

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