I've got a cheap Amazon contact piezo transducer that I'm thinking of mounting in my HB-35 semi acoustic so I can thump the body a bit to get those percussive drum sounds like that ginger guy*.
There are 3 seperate ones connected to a jack socket, so my idea is to spread them out around the body to try to capture different frequencies of thumping. Layout would be something like this:
https://flic.kr/p/2oHWin8
I'm thinking of just having one tone control and converting the other to a volume control for the transducers wired directly to the main jack socket. Has anyone had any success doing this? Should I use epoxy to fix the little blighters in the guitar?
I suspect that I'm going to have some issues with the output being tiny compared to the humbuckers, so I may have to incorporate a tiny pre-amp. If I have to do this, has anyone got any recommendations for something cheap & useable? I really only want to capture the drumming sounds, not get a pristine acoustic guitar sound.
* I think he's called Ned Sherin or something like that!
Comments
I would use superglue to stick them on, but epoxy will work too and may be easier to work with since it has a longer setting time. You can clamp them in place while it sets using some bits of soft wood the right size to wedge between the guitar back and the pickup.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I've used it live a few times doing an acoustic set with cut-down band and sound engineers hate it - apparently it's a much hotter signal than they expect from the usual under-saddle setups and is a bit hard to control feedback, so might be worth bearing in mind if you're going to use it live (although the pickup did cost me £3 so I can't really moan!)