Piezo Pickups

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 14 Aug 2001 6:39 am

I have an old Barcus Berry piezo pickup from the 1970's. Anybody remember those? I was thinking about trying it out on my dobro to see how it sounds. Any recommedations on how to attach it to the spider bridge assembly? In the old days, the pickups came with some sticky, white putty for that purpose. I still have some of the putty, but it's so old that is no longer pliable.

Any ideas?

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Lee, from South Texas

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 14 Aug 2001 7:53 am

Double-faced tape, or maybe some Florist's clay?[This message was edited by Donny Hinson on 14 August 2001 at 08:55 AM.]

Sage · Post by **Sage** » 14 Aug 2001 10:12 am

Set aside for a moment all of the hard realities it would take to do this, but -imagine - how do you think the PSG would sound if it had piezo pickups on it?
T. Sage Harmos

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 14 Aug 2001 10:39 am

Sage - I've tried holding the BB pickup on several places on my steel and it really doesn't pick up any sound. I believe it takes quite a bit of vibration to activate the pickup. The only place it picked up much sound was right where the string passes over the finger on the changer.

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Lee, from South Texas

Bill Terry · Post by **Bill Terry** » 14 Aug 2001 1:15 pm

Lee, those early BB piezo pickups typically required a pre-amp. They worked without one, but the tone was tinny and weak. That could be why you didn't get much signal from placing it around on the steel.

Try poster adhesive, you can get it at most office supplies. Use as thin a layer as possible to hold the pickup on, too much tends to mute the signal.

These guys sell the 'real' stuff, probably some music stores would have it too.
http://www.supersensitive.com/pickup.html

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Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 14 Aug 2001 7:18 pm

Bill - I forgot to mention, I still have the old pre amp that BB made. This is the large one (model 1330-1) with Treble, Bass, Sensitivity, and Volume controls. It runs on one 9v battery. Many years ago I had it mounted inside my old Martin D-28. It sounded real good back then, but I'm guessing it's pretty old technology now.

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Lee, from South Texas

Bill Terry · Post by **Bill Terry** » 15 Aug 2001 7:30 am

Hey Lee, that's the one.... I expect that pre-amp would still be fine. Other than some improvements in op-amp technology since then, a pre-amp is still pretty much a pre-amp.

If you really want to get into it, check it out for possible op-amp upgrade. It probably has some 4558s somewhere that could be replaced with something newer. A TLO72 or one of the Burr Brown parts (can't remember that number) are direct replacements.

BTW, it rained here yesterday, I got almost an inch at my house. Bet you didn't get any down there

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[This message was edited by Bill Terry on 15 August 2001 at 08:31 AM.]

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 15 Aug 2001 5:28 pm

Sage, if you have a double neck guitar, just crank up th volume, turn on one neck and play the other! This will give you some idea of what the piezo might sound like. Due to the mechanical noise, and the lack of a lot of vibration in a PSG, the piezo probably wouldn't be practical by itself. But, it might produce interesting sounds when blended (in phase, or out of phase) with the standard pickup through a mixer.

Lee Baucum · Post by **Lee Baucum** » 17 Aug 2001 8:19 pm

Well, here is what I found and it works great. It's called Removable Mounting Putty. I found it at Office Max. It's a white, non-toxic putty designed to be used to mount posters, photos, and other paper products. It looks and feels just like the stuff that Barcus Berry used way back when.

By the way, I haven't tried the pickup on my dobro yet. As luck would have it, I need to play acoustic guitar at church next weekend and neither they nor I have a decent mike to use. I mounted the pickup in my old Martin D-28 and it still works just fine. The pre-amp was a bit too noisy, so I'm not even using that. I plugged the guitar directly into the little rack I use with my steel and it sounds real good. The rack has a dual 15-band EQ and a Lex MPX-100. I'm running that into a little Fender Princeton 65 I bought a few weeks ago. I was quite suprised (and pleased) at how good it sounded, once I got the EQ tweaked just right. I think it should work just fine in our small church.

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Lee, from South Texas