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Location: New South Wales, Australia | My first dumb question about pre amps provided many informative responses for which I'm grateful. Now for the next one...
A lot of people talk about the sound of the pre amp......what role (if any) does the pick up play in this and does that sound depend on the type of pickup.
My 1860 has a piezo pickup but I don't know what that means. My barbecue and gas stove have a piezo lighter in them and I don't understand that either.
And is it pie-zo or pee-ets-so? |
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Location: Campbell River, British Columbia | Depends if you're Italian or sane. |
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Location: Orange County, California | Good question. You'll get lots of answers. I'll start. the Piezo-electric principle is the same whether it's under the saddle of your guitar, or used to light your grill. Quartz crystals have this cool property about them. If you vibrate them, (at the right frequency for their size) they emit electrons!! on the guitar they put one crystal on each side of the "+" wire inside the pickup, so that it makes something like an AC signal as the string vibrates them back and forth. On the grill, they just whack it really hard on one side and the voltage it generates is high enough to make a spark jump the little gap. FOOM!! it lights the flame.
As for what role it plays in the the sound of the guitar, the idea is to have enough "capacitance" in the system to maintain a smooth signal without "clipping" or "sagging" in the wave form, which is how it will sound when amplified. It's kinda like AM radio at this point. Most pickups use one giant element under all of the strings to get more signal, because they of them are designed to fit under a conventional saddle which is only about 1/8" thick. Ovation's OPP has a bunch of really big individual elements, one for each string. The idea is that they all add to the overall signal without affecting one another. It's my favorite "pee-zo"!! |
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Location: Warren,Pa. | That's a great explanation! Allow me to expand this question a little, if I may.
I install K&K P/U's in my Ovations, disconnecting the factory p/u. To my ear, the K&K's provide a more natural sound; however, Temp says K&K's are essentially piezos in a different form and are cheap crap for too much money (at least I think that's what he said). Why do I feel like the Ovation pickup delivers a crappy piezo sound and the K&K sounds like a mic'd sound?
John <>{ |
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Location: Warren,Pa. | BTW Oz...great original question. Welcome to the club! We're all learning things here.
John <>{ |
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Location: Scotland | The term piezo comes from the Greek word "piezein" which basically means to press, and refers to any material where a current is induced when it is placed under stress. Piezo transducers can be cystals as in the Ovation pickup, or ceramic (K&K pickups, greetings card buzzers) or may be in cable form or thin film. Piezo technology was used for vibration sensing in aerospace, seismology and offshore drilling long before it found it's way into musical instruments.
John, tone is totally subjective. Personally I think most, if not all soundboard transducers intended for guitars, including the K&K sound like cheap nasty mikes, and I know for a fact that their feedback threshold is significantly lower than undersaddle transducers. I'm happy to use K&K type pickups on instruments with small soundboards such as Ukes, Mandolins or Dulcimers, but never for anything as big as a guitar. The Ovation piezo tone is a compromise, but for my purposes it's a compromise I can deal with. |
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| Slothead Fred,
So the term 'piezo' is actually a term defining the function of the quartz crystal. Is it pure quartz or a composite? |
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Location: Scotland | It's not just quartz, several other crystals including certain types of salt and sugar have piezo-electric qualities. There are pure crystals and ceramic material (early record player cartridges were essentialy piezo-ceramic pickups) but there are now other possibilites |
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| Trade secret no doubt. |
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Location: Orange County, California | Paul's dead right. I used the term Quartz kinda like "kleenex" or "xerox", so we'd know I wasn't talking about the "other" crystal... I don't like the looks I get when I tell people "Oh yeah, I was experimenting with crystals back when I was 10" or better yet, "one time, when I was cutting some crystal in my garage, and I saw these really cool blue sparks" :p :D :p :D
Most used today are man-made. It's easier to "grow" or make something a certain size/shape than it is to start with a big chunk of it and cut it down to size (risk damaging it, changing it's properties, etc).
This is fun Paul. And we haven't even talked about crystal oscillators yet... |
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Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | In nyc it's pronounced two ways:
PIE-(like the pie you eat)-EE-ZOH, which is probably the correct way, but most people say
PIE-ZOH dropping out the ee sound in the middle.
And I see from above that in califonia it's pronounced PEE-ZOH. |
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Location: SoCal | Keep in mind that when you're talking plugged in sound, a great deal of what you're hearing is the preamp, not the pickup. A piezo straight out is, from what I understand (which is usually limited) pretty nasty and harsh.
And it's pronounced PEE-A-ZO.... |
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| FYI...Webster's shows the pronunciation as:
piy-EET-zoh ..with the accent on the second syllable. (go figure...) |
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Location: Warren,Pa. | I love learning from you guys. |
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Location: New South Wales, Australia | So basically, the pre amp is always more important than the pickup? |
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Location: Orange County, California | So basically, the pre amp is always more important than the pickup?
In the grand scheme of things, yes. But the "prime source" of the signal (be it an under saddle pickup, soundhole pickup, body transducer, internal mic) IS the signal the preamp has to work with. So if YOU don't like the characteristics of a certain type of pickup or mic, a conventional preamp isn't going to fix it, unless you're talking about something like the VIP-5 :D :p :D :p |
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Location: New South Wales, Australia | Thanks Fred...you guys are gonna think I'm a moron, but pickup/transducer, what's the difference? |
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Location: Bluffton, SC | Don't want to interrupt here but I think that's a great question, oz.
Carry on... |
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Location: San Bernardino, California | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transducer
There's a bunch more I.E. speaker, mic, piezo pickup, electric pickup. |
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Location: San Bernardino, California | I've always wondered if you could use a Hall effect sensor for a guitar pickup. |
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Location: New South Wales, Australia | Thanks for the link BruDev. I just had a quick look but there's way too much information for me to take in at this time of day. It's beer o'clock here, (5.30pm), the day is done and we're starting our four day Easter break. I'm gonna have a real good look at that link over the next couple of days. |
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Location: San Bernardino, California | Here, bend your mind a little more.
One of the more exotic types:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetostriction |
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Location: New South Wales, Australia | WOW!!! You really DO want to mess with my head :D
Happy Easter |
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Location: Warren,Pa. | This thread has flushed out the top authorities on any technical q's an OFC member might have.
Paul...I'd give anything to sit in on your class.
John <>{ |
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Location: New South Wales, Australia | Pre amps and pickups.....does an electric guitar have a pre amp and if not, what gives it its sound...or are electric guitar pickups a whole different animal to acoustic guitar pickups?
Just tell me when you've had enough of me :D |
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Location: closely held secret | Sometimes, yes, and yes. :D |
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Location: Orange County, California | Electics *can* have a pre-amp. They're often called "active electronics" and its mostly for tone control, although some do add "gain". There are magnets in an electric guitar pickup with a coil of wire around them. when something magnetic (the string of the guitar) move in and out of the magnetic field created by the pickup, it (new word) "Induces" an electric current in the wire wrapped around the magnet. This is an AC signal, and it's got enough ooomph all by itself to "overdive" many amplifiers.
(side note) Guess what would happen to your strings if you applied an ac signal BACK INTO your pickups. OK, I'll tell you. They would MOVE back and forth with the signal. This is the principal behind a really cool device called a Sustainiac
Yes. They are a whole 'nother animal. |
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Location: closely held secret | Originally posted by mtnbikerfred:
(side note) Guess what would happen to your strings if you applied an ac signal BACK INTO your pickups. OK, I'll tell you. They would MOVE back and forth with the signal. This is the principal behind a really cool device called a Sustainiac
And it's how the EBow works as well. |
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Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | You folks are incredible. I'm still trying to just keep track of which knob is volume and which is tone on all the different models I play. |
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Location: New South Wales, Australia | Originally posted by ProfessorBB:
You folks are incredible. I'm still trying to just keep track of which knob is volume and which is tone on all the different models I play. I know where you're coming from Professor. All the knowledge here is mind blowing. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can so I can understand a bit more about my instrument and what makes it work.
I've got a few more questions to come but I think I'll wait a few days.....don't want to wear out my welcome :) |
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dumb question no.2 -- pickups