by ibarakishi » Thu May 17, 2018 3:02 am
i sat down in front of my amp and among other things, tested pretty thoroughly the piezo mics ILF member resincum suggested just to get my feet wet. I used them on my phin (acoustic body) running into my Ibanez TSA30 combo amp if that matters to anyone, pretty much at just flat/neutral settings. This is all new to me, and i am sure there are people out there that are interested in this area of thought but it is new to them as well. Below are my thoughts:
1.) the type of piezo that resincum suggested that he uses too are the type that come in a sort of plastic covering that already has a wire connected to a pickup jack insert. On the bottom of the mic is a sort of double sided tape that you peel off the paper and then stick it wherever you want it to be. I messed around first listening to where i thought i might want to place it without taking the paper off and just pressing it firmly against my phin. I had two areas that interested me. The first one i ended up not being happy with (too much resonance and treble when using a pick) and had to remove the piezo mic to try out the second spot. When i did this and stuck it on the second test spot, it noticeably reduced in sound quality from the first spot. Turned out the tape is really finicky and you pretty much have to get it right the first try or it isn't going to work well (even if it sticks well and firmly). When i pressed on the piezo to make it push up firmly against the body, you could hear the sound quality increase tremendously to where it should be at. But immediately after removing my finger, back to a sort of blanket of sound and easy feedback. I understand 100% now why people glue their piezo disks permanently to whatever they are wanting to pick up sound from. Luckily i had ordered 2, so i just popped the second one on to the second test spot and it worked fine with the fresh tape. I don't have any tape that is similar to what is on them, but when i find some i will try to replace the tape on the first piezo mic and see if it works again.
2.) Once the piezo was in place, i ran through really trying to figure out how it worked with my pedals. My main concern was distortion or high gain. After working my way through each pedal, i came to the conclusion that piezos are extremely temperamental to anything with moderate to high gain. This only increases when volume is increased too on an amp. If the mic catches even the smallest hint of feedback or any sort of ground loop or any background noise. it will throw it into ringing feedback almost immediately if you are trying to play at moderate to higher volumes. What type of room you are playing in thus really dictates how much you can push things and to what level you can get crazy with stuff.
3.) Seems obvious, but me not owning an eq pedal became kind of a bummer really quick. Used my amp's basic eq to dial things in which worked, but i can see this as being a huge problem for anyone wanting to use anything like this live with multiple instruments running through one amp. The settings between my guitar and my phin were pretty significant when compared to each other, and thus would make live looping a headache without some sort of eq for the phin. For recording in isolation each instrument, its fine. But for anything live, things would get frustrating pretty quick. Also, each pedal has a sort of sweet spot that it can work well with the piezo. Having an eq pedal to hone in things easy would be hugely helpful for someone wanting to not have to mess with tons of things.
4.) When i set up the mic position on my phin, initially i was trying to get a sound to come out of my amp that translated as closely as possible to what i was hearing in my room without an amp or mic from my phin. I was able to get pretty close. This piezo doesn't get as loud as a normal guitar pickup, but it gets close. The sound itself is pretty flat and neutral, no coloring or any sort of saturation. It pretty much just gives you what it is.
5.) I can also understand fully now why people like to just have these permanently installed inside their instruments. for some types of instrument shapes, and depending on how you play them, something external like this can be pretty cumbersome. I play the phin almost always sitting on a floor resting on my feet with strap over my shoulder, and just the shape of the body and how the jack system is with the free floating wires is kind of goofy at times.
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6.) Overall, i think that for the money, messing around with the piezo will be interesting and fun. For now i think it will let me do what i want to experiment with this year a bit. But I don't see this model as the end goal for me though with acoustic instruments and amplifying them. In the future i will probably wire up some larger discs and see how those sound and translate. I will also probably also try out something like that lace matchbook sensor pickup too, as i have only loved every lace pickup i have ever tried. In my guitar i currently have lace hot golds and an alumitone, and honestly if i can get that same sort of tone in my phin but with the same resonance of its acoustic hollow body, i will consider my search done.
In conclusion, learned a lot and hope that this might help someone in some way typing it out.
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