[[email protected]]

hello

i have an ovation applause electro-acoustic guitar, which has a piezo
mic under the bridge. it also has some small preamp with EQ + gain.

like every mic a piezo can be reverted to be used as a speaker, am i
right ?

i plugged my guitar to a small hi-fi amp, but no sound came out.

i don't have a +9 volt battery right now (which is required to amplify
the sound coming OUT of the guitar), but i don't think it's
necessary ?

just experimenting... would love to hear some sound coming of it,
making the strings resonate, and use it as a weird echo/reverb...

[Scott Dorsey]

wrote:
i have an ovation applause electro-acoustic guitar, which has a piezo
mic under the bridge. it also has some small preamp with EQ + gain.

Okay.

like every mic a piezo can be reverted to be used as a speaker, am i
right ?

Yes, although they are a pain to drive.

i plugged my guitar to a small hi-fi amp, but no sound came out.

i don't have a +9 volt battery right now (which is required to amplify
the sound coming OUT of the guitar), but i don't think it's
necessary ?

This is because there is active electronics between the pickup and the
output of the amp. If you remove the electronics and drive the pickup
directly, you should be able to get a sound out of it although it will
not be a pleasant one. You are apt to damage the electronics by connecting
them to an amplifier directly, however.

just experimenting... would love to hear some sound coming of it,
making the strings resonate, and use it as a weird echo/reverb...

You'll probably have a better time doing this with a an instrument
with a conventional magnetic pickup, but you still won't get a lot
of output since these pickups are not designed to produce a lot of
force.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[[email protected]]

thanks

i don't want to damage my guitar so i'll leave it as it is...

i had another idea : getting two cheap piezo mics, and attach them to
a ride cymbal, to make some kind of weird plate reverb. one would feed
the sound, at the middle of the cymbal, the other would receive it, at
the cymbal's edge.

got this idea while singing near my drumkit's cymbals. it makes some
interesting overtones.

there's this video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-xzoL1fApk

but the result is quite muddy, guess it's because the metal sheet
hasn't got any tension applied to it, and also because the piezo mic
has a very limited frequency response). but a B20 bronze cymbal, being
cast, pressed and hammered, already has an "internal" tension and
covers a wide frequency range. sure the frequency response will be
inacurate and messy, but it might be interesting...

anybody ever tried this ?

btw Scott, i've ordered the MK-012 modification kit on ebay, can't
wait...

matthieu

[Scott Dorsey]

wrote:
i had another idea : getting two cheap piezo mics, and attach them to
a ride cymbal, to make some kind of weird plate reverb. one would feed
the sound, at the middle of the cymbal, the other would receive it, at
the cymbal's edge.

Get a couple $1 watches. Take the back off, and you will find a piezo
element back there that makes it go beep. You can pay $3 for the same
element at Radio Shack if you prefer, or get a bunch of them for the
$20 minimum order at digi-key.

These things want to be driven by a high-Z source. You will need to put
a resistor in series with them to get flatter response. But if you don't
care about flat response, just use them as-is. A standard power amp can
drive them.

anybody ever tried this ?

No, but I have used the $1 watch piezos for guitar pickups. They don't
sound all that good, but they can be fun anyway. They want a very very
high-Z input.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Geoff]

wrote:
hello

i have an ovation applause electro-acoustic guitar, which has a piezo
mic under the bridge. it also has some small preamp with EQ + gain.

like every mic a piezo can be reverted to be used as a speaker, am i
right ?

i plugged my guitar to a small hi-fi amp, but no sound came out.

i don't have a +9 volt battery right now (which is required to amplify
the sound coming OUT of the guitar), but i don't think it's
necessary ?

just experimenting... would love to hear some sound coming of it,
making the strings resonate, and use it as a weird echo/reverb...

Hey, it's 28 July , not 1 April.

geoff

[Geoff]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
wrote:
i had another idea : getting two cheap piezo mics, and attach them to
a ride cymbal, to make some kind of weird plate reverb. one would
feed the sound, at the middle of the cymbal, the other would receive
it, at the cymbal's edge.

Get a couple $1 watches. Take the back off, and you will find a piezo
element back there that makes it go beep. You can pay $3 for the same
element at Radio Shack if you prefer, or get a bunch of them for the
$20 minimum order at digi-key.

These things want to be driven by a high-Z source. You will need to
put a resistor in series with them to get flatter response. But if
you don't care about flat response, just use them as-is. A standard
power amp can drive them.

anybody ever tried this ?

No, but I have used the $1 watch piezos for guitar pickups. They
don't sound all that good, but they can be fun anyway. They want a
very very high-Z input.


They make good triggers for MIDI drum controllers....

geoff