Piezo - love it or hate it?

grungebob

I like it blended but not on its own.

Best I heard was on an Ovation VXT I shouldnt have sold. Next best was a EBMM silo and then I installed the graphtec system into a PRS EG4 I had.  All very usable to give the flavour of acoustic but none ( except maybe the VXT) could be used in isolation.

Rocker

On my Anderson hollow drop top, a piezo 'acoustic' pickup is fitted.  There is a 'blend' control to mix in some of the magnetic pickup output.  Sounds pretty good to my ears.

thermionic

ICBM said:

[Nerd warning] There is a good reason why undersaddle pickups sound wrong. When you hear an acoustic guitar, the sound is produced by the *movement* of the strings, moving the soundboard. This means that the peak sound pressure comes when the string is moving fastest in the middle of its vibration cycle. This is also true of the signal waveform from a contact pickup, and even a magnetic - which respond to motion, not pressure - but is not true of a piezo trapped under the bridge saddle… that produces its peak signal at each end of the cycle when the string is exerting its maximum and minimum pressure on the pickup. Hence the odd overly-pronounced attack and weirdly hollow quality to the sound - because it's too sensitive to the sharp transient as the string is released, and is literally out of phase compared to the true acoustic sound, by 90º. That's also why blending one with another type of pickup sounds better, because you get the full frequency range of the piezo but with more of the correct phasing. [/Nerd warning]

ISTR that the earliest piezo pickups were stuck onto the soundboard. I guess they moved them to the bridge to get the wires out of the way.

57Deluxe

not if it has either fish or fruit on it...

Stuckfast

I can't bear them in isolation. That said, I suspect that more than a few of the classic recorded acoustic guitar sounds we know and love have quite a bit of piezo blended into the miked sound. Certainly if anyone brings an acoustic with a pickup into the studio I'll always record it, and it'll often be in the mix at a lowish level.

Babyfrank

Depends entirely on the specific pickup and the preamp;  I have one on my Faith Venus which sounds pretty good compared to previous piezo undersaddle systems I'd had. However, I recently picked up a Tanglewood Sapling 3/4 size travel guitar and wanted a pickup in it.  It's too small for a soundhole pickup, and the bridge slot is too shallow for an under-saddle piezo (without additional routing, which I don't have the tools for).

I looked at K&K pickups, but as they were more expensive than the guitar itself (!), I eventually sourced a passive Piezo from JJB Electronics on Ebay (http://jjb-electronics.com/prestige-220.html), and was very impressed by the results when playing live.  I did a recorded A/B of the two recently, and it compares very well to the Faith... sounds very natural, slightly less trebly, and definitely has less of the piezo "quack" that is still slightly apparent on the Faith under-saddle pickup. 

Also had the stock piezo bridge on my Parker P-38 electric, which was a great substitute acoustic when played in my covers band, routing through the PA.  Sounded particularly good when mixed with my amp tone to add body.

And to finish - Ed Sheeran.... all that money and his guitar still sounds like crap, with a horrible quacky piezo sound,  I don't understand it!

Bridgehouse

The thing I hate the most is the American pronunciation of Pie-Zow 

Grates as much as the sound.

Nearly as bad as Solder - pronounced Soh-Dur