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.


This body was purchased on eBay from a parted-out guitar. Might have been a Squier, I don't remember. It was in pretty good shape, and I gave it a good polishing. The neck is hand-made, one of my first. The back is hand-picked Home Depot maple, the fretboard is pre-slotted rosewood from StewMac, I hadn't yet worked out how to make my own. If you cut the first two frets off a 34" fretboard, you end up with a 30" scale. That's about the limit with a pre-slotted fretboard though, as you start to run out of frets at the other end. The dots are 1/4" pearl from StewMac, expensive. The frets are probably pre-cut Fender.

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