Piezo wire

[jimi]

Does anyone know a source for piezo wire for making undersaddle pickups?

[Sweetfinger]

It isn't a wire..

It is more like a laminated material. The more enterprising and cheap-ass experimenters(like me) have had hours of fun cutting up the gold-colored piezo speaker/transducer discs found in small electronic devices like games, phones, and alarm clocks. You can also just buy new ones at the local electronics emporium but that eliminates the fun of tearing apart a dead electronic do-hickey.

http://www.mcld.co.uk/oddmu/tincanba...transducer.jpg

an undersaddle transducer is essentially six little chunks of this material stuck together and wrapped with insulated shielding. The stick-on dime or quarter sized transducers are basically just a small transducer like the one in the link above stuck in a housing with epoxy.

Of course the better commercial pickups probably have slightly different formulas for their material, but that shouldn't be a deterrent to a cheap afternoon of fun, should it?

[ken]

How do you attach wire to them? I have an old friend who wanted a violin transducer made of this stuff.

Ken

[jimi]

I mean piezo coax like headway pickups are made from. I have some from RS but they don't seem to have it now.

[Sweetfinger]

With the disc material, I've always soldered right to the material. I imagine that the commercial six pc. ones are soldered all at once with paste or some similarly clever method.

as for coax wire, I'm guessing that it is some sort of high-tech sensing material for earthquake detection in Japanese buildings or something like that. Who knows? I'm sure that the LAST thing the manufacturer imagined was that it would be used in guitars. I could be wrong. I've never seen the wire material in any electronics hobby shop or parts catalog, but It's gotta be out there somewhere.

[Satamax]

I mean piezo coax like headway pickups are made from. I have some from RS but they don't seem to have it now.

Hi everybody.

Jimi, it's NTK piezzo wire, i've looked on their site, but it's a busy one, so i didn't find much, i bet if you phone their importer into your country, they will most certainly be able to help. I'm more intrested into polyvinylidene film like pick up the world pickups.

Bye.

Max.

[David Schwab]

Here's some sources for piezo coax:

TC Lutherie, Piezo Materials

Measurement Specialties

Piezo Systems, Inc.

[jimi]

Thanks for the links David that's useful.
I couldnt find any mention of coax on the NTK site.

[David Schwab]

You're welcome.

[Satamax]

Hi Guys!

Well, sorry Jimi, it's the only brand i've ever had. There's a preamp that a guy designed on the MIMF, here's the only pic of the schemo i can link to, but if you register, you'll be able to look at all the schemos in the library.

Bye.

Max.

http://www.mimf.com/cgi-bin/WebX?50@...JI.0@.1dcf784d

[David Schwab]

as for coax wire, I'm guessing that it is some sort of high-tech sensing material for earthquake detection in Japanese buildings or something like that. Who knows? I'm sure that the LAST thing the manufacturer imagined was that it would be used in guitars.

I'm sure it was used for something like that originally... it's almost just very microphonic coax cable!

I believe Rick Tuner was the first to use it for guitars with his Highlander pickup. At least that was the first time I ever heard of the stuff.

I haven't used any of it yet, but I plan on building a piezo bridge for my fretless bass using it.

I read a tip on MIMF one day... the poster said he removes the braided shied wire, and then paints the core wire's insulator with silver conductive paint. He then wraps a bare wire around one end to make the shield connection. This makes the coax thinner and more flexible, and that makes the pickup more sensitive, and gives a higher output.

As I said, I haven't tried any of this myself.

[Steve Dallman]

I've used piezo cable.

We had a piezo cable pickup at the music store where I work. It kept turning back up on the shelf. When I asked the guitar tech why it kept returning, he said, "It sounds like crap."

That interested me. I brought it home and put it in a cheap acoustic with a Fishman preamp/EQ and indeed, it sounded terrible.

But I was convinced that it was because it wasn't making solid contact in the slot. I put a thin strip of Mexican modeling clay under and over the rope, replaced the bridge, and strung it up. I gave it a night to harden, and low and behold, it sounds great.

The clay is easy to work with and if it has to be removed, it comes out easily as it is pretty brittle.

The rope, with the hardened clay, doesn't have the quackiness of most piezo pickups, including piezo film. It remains quite feedback resistant and works great with the EQ.

The guitar is a Vantage my boss bought for the case. He was going to throw the guitar away as he didn't think it was worth the time to set it up. It's turned out to be a thoroughly fine instrument when plugged in, and not too bad acoustically.

The piezo rope has it's possibilities. The clay idea came from an article titled, "Is Clay the Way" where the author used clay to even out the response of piezo pickups. I've found it to be helpful with some piezo pickups, and not good for others. The moisture in the clay can cause some shorting of some piezo chunk pickups...at least until it has dried enough.

[Just Bob]

I'm sure it was used for something like that originally... it's almost just very microphonic coax cable!

I believe Rick Tuner was the first to use it for guitars with his Highlander pickup. At least that was the first time I ever heard of the stuff.

I haven't used any of it yet, but I plan on building a piezo bridge for my fretless bass using it.

I read a tip on MIMF one day... the poster said he removes the braided shied wire, and then paints the core wire's insulator with silver conductive paint. He then wraps a bare wire around one end to make the shield connection. This makes the coax thinner and more flexible, and that makes the pickup more sensitive, and gives a higher output.

As I said, I haven't tried any of this myself.

I looked into it a few years ago. My understanding is that the use of this piezo coax as a guitar pickup is patented or licensed. I don't have a citation but somebody might know. Anyway, the manufacturer would not sell it for use as a pickup. Just for surveillance use. Its made to be buried and used as perimeter security. I'd be careful about putting it into anything for sale.

Its pretty noisy stuff. The plastic piezo dielectric isn't exceptionally springy. More squishy than springy. May work better (at the expense of output) if there was a secondary springy material alongside it. Never got around to trying that.

[David Schwab]

I looked into it a few years ago. My understanding is that the use of this piezo coax as a guitar pickup is patented or licensed. I don't have a citation but somebody might know.

I can't find a patent for a coax under saddle pickup, but I haven't looked at all of them yet.

Here's the Highlander pickup. They don't have a patent number listed anywhere on the site, so I think it's safe to assume they don't have one.

http://www.highlanderpickups.com/techspec/pickup.htm

[Just Bob]

I did a quick search. "A transducer for a stringed musical instrument utilizes a coaxial structure. An electromechanical film tape is disposed about an inner, electrically conductive core. An outer conductor is formed about the electromechanical film tape. The electromechanical film tape may be provided as a piezoelectric polymer film" Patented by Fishman and it issued in 2004. #6,677,514 Also # 6,429,367 and #6,239,349. The piezo coax is actually manufactured by a spiral wrap of the piezo stuff around the core. Roughly 45 patents listed if you go to USPTO.gov and search on "coaxial AND piezoelectric and musical and instrument".

Others have the multi-element pickups patented and others have the electret transducers patented. So far as experimenting there's no problem. But, if you wanted to sell a product with this sort of sensor in it you'd need to be careful. Either license it or buy a ready-made sensor from somebody. Pretty much everything you can think up infringes on somebody's patent as I'm sure you know. Unless you stick to the tried-and-true stuff that has already expired. But, for the piezo saddle pickups that isn't real important to me since I don't really love the sound. Certainly convenient. Its a nice concept but the materials have issues. Noise, longevity, dynamic range, temperature, etc, etc.