Allan Speers Posted June 7, 2001 Share Posted June 7, 2001 I love blending the Piezos in my strat w/ the reg guitar sound. Would like to try this with bass. Are there Piezzo bridges or saddles available for bass? Any opinions on which is best, or perhaps what body wood gives the best results? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Turner Posted June 8, 2001 Share Posted June 8, 2001 My Electroline series of solid body basses have both magnetic and piezo pickups, both of which types we make ourselves. The piezos are installed in Hipshot bridges with saddles custom made for us. The blending options give an amazing range of tones from fairly traditional with the magnetic pickups to a very wide bandwidth "modern" sound. I put a blend control in for the two magnetics, a master volume and master tone, and then a piezo/magnetic blend. Lots of tones without resorting to EQ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Speers Posted June 8, 2001 Author Share Posted June 8, 2001 Rick, though I would definitely prefer to retro-fit my urrent basses, I will certainly check out your line. Didn't know you made basses, though I've heard great things about your guitars. Hope your basses use passive pickups, I never met an active pickup I could really love. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Turner Posted June 9, 2001 Share Posted June 9, 2001 Well, any pickup is active as soon as you plug into an amp! The real question is whether the first stage of preamplification is any good. Technically, I make passive pickups, and not particularly low impedance ones at that. I prefer to wind magnetic pickups 'til they sound right to me, and then preserve that sound with a good 18 volt on-board preamp which also allows blending the magnetic pickups with the piezos. You can't really get away with blending without some electronics, but with a good preamp design (no active EQ, BTW)and 18 volts to work with, there's no hyped-up sound as I, too have come to just hate. I even do my magnetic pickup blending in the passive mode before then actively blending that signal with the piezo. I like to think that I'm getting the best of both worlds...passive magnetic tone with active line driving and mixing capabilities. I've now got two ex-editors-in-chief of Bass Players using my Electroline basses. Richard Johnston has a piezo-only fretless, and Jim Roberts has a mag/piezo fretted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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