| ampage Tube Amps / Music Electronics |
For current discussions, please visit Music Electronics Forum. |
ampage archive
Vintage threads from the first ten years
pickup wiring
:
 8/8/2000 8:12 PM |
|
Bob |
pickup wiring I hope I'm putting this topic in the right place. If not, my apologies. I'm working on an electrified violin for a friend. His complaint is a very trebly sound (with a lack of bass) out of his pickup. The pickup is a Barcus-Berry pickup mounted in the bass side of the wooden bridge. It is wired to a volume control - an Allen-Bradley type W mini pot with a Value of 1 meg. All of this pot's volume occurs in the first 1/8 of its rotation (it goes from full volume to off), so I'm assuming this isn't a good value match to the pickup. I've also been experimenting with various capacitors to shunt some of the excess highs to ground to get the tone a bit better but when the cap gets too large, all I succeed in doing is losing alot the output volume. Any ideas, suggestions? Thanks in Adv. Bob |
|---|---|
| 8/9/2000 12:21 AM |
||
| dutch |
Bob- You could put in an FET or MOSFET buffer to present an ultra-high impedance load to the pickup. This, of course, requires a battery.... 
C ya, Dutch | |
|---|---|---|
| 8/9/2000 1:02 AM |
|
| Sweetfinger |
Sounds like an impedance mismatch. |
|---|---|
| 8/9/2000 4:25 PM |
|
| Mark Hammer |
Ditto on the impedance mismatch and suggested solution. The timbre you describe is absolutely typical of situations where a piezo pickup is used without suitable buffering. Any High-in, low-out circuit will work fine. I wouldn't doubt that you could rig up a single-FET-based pre-amp/buffer with watch batteries and 1/8w resistors and epoxy it to the side of a pot. 25 years ago I used to make similar deals for epoxying to the skulls of rats, so they could give us clean EEG over 50ft of cable in another room. If he doesn't intend on using stereo, you can use a 3-conductor cable (shield and 2 hot) and "phantom power" the pre-amp from a 9V battery placed elsewhere. Hell, if he wants wireless, you could phantom power it from the power supply of the transmitter hanging off his pants pocket. |
|---|---|
| Page 1 of 1 |