New here, need help with piezo/humbucker combo

[JohnnysCash]

Hello Please accept my apologies if this is posted in the wrong place.

I have an old Italian EKO acoustic guitar which I added a humbucking (pinched from an Epiphone Gibson 335 replica) PUP to. The idea of which was to plug it directly into a PA and use for live gigging. It turns out that this PUP offers a very dull tone and low volume when plugged directly into the PA probably due to severely mismatched impedance.

I also have a piezo underbridge system (preamp included) taken from another guitar which I would now like to try out in the same guitar.

My question is: Is it possible for me to wire the output from the humbucker volume pot (in parallel) directly to the input of the piezo's guitar mounted preamp? I'm thinking that this way I could make a mixture of the two PUPs and have more versatile sound options. Please tell me if this is feasible or not.

Understand that I have extremely limited knowledge of electronics so please keep jargon terms to a minimum if possible.

I would REALLY appreciate anyone's help on this issue before I start attempting to hack into the piezo preamp.

If any further clarification of my question is required, please feel free to ask, or m,aybe I could post up a rudimentary diagram to explain what I mean.

Thanks very much for your time in reading this.

[JohnnysCash]

Anyone? I'm desperate. I have a gig coming up on the 9th. Please could someone help?

[Steve Conner]

Probably not, the loading from the humbucker would screw up the tone of the piezo.

It would be better to use a separate preamp for the magnetic pickup, maybe someone else can recommend one. If you're not good with electronics, the most foolproof way forward is to install two preamps and two output jacks on the guitar, and plug into two channels on the PA.

Or wire the magnetic pickup straight to a second output jack, and use an active DI box to put it into the PA.

The pickup guys here all hate Epiphone pickups, so maybe that's part of the problem. And, the bronze coloured strings on acoustic guitars don't always work well with magnetic pickups.

[JohnnysCash]

Hey Steve, thanks a lot for getting back to me, I really appreciate your input on the matter. I bought a new guitar in the end, but needed one anyway.

I figured on getting a preamp or something similar (DI box?) for the epiphone pickup, which I still may do. Hopefully it will brighten up the tone a little as it currently sounds too warm, which I gather is caused by cable capacitance. Unfortunately the stupid piezo element I installed was faulty. It was from an old guitar so I forgot the horror of this malfunction.

I've gone out and bought a couple of those piezo discs for a few cents and am in the process of finding out how to get them hooked up to the guitar preamp in a way that won't cause anything to explode or spontaneously combust. The idea is to dot several of them around inside the guitar to get a nice mix of tones, tho I'm not sure what kind of freq. response to expect from them, I bought a variety of sizes to experiment with first. Should I have any problems I shall post here.

Thanks again!

[Sweetfinger]

Some of the active endpin preamps have solder pads for passive magnetic pickups. Looks like the OP is trying to do this cheep, though. The real problem with the dull tone and low volume is more likely an impedance mis-match going into the PA. The only way to get any real control over the individual volumes is to run each pickup into some kind of preamp and then use a blend knob between the outputs. I've gotten somewhat passable results just hooking the piezo to the passive pickup, but you'd still need to go through something to match impedance.
IMO, a plain ol' humbucker stuck in the soundhole of an acoustic guitar actually provides a decent sound- unless there's an impedance problem or the 'bucker is a distortion type.
For a cleaner sound, you could remove the adjustable polepieces from the pickup. Put 'em back in if you don't like it.

[Gibsonman63]

If you are still planning on using the magnetic pickup, a DI should work fine for matching impedance. Then you can run the piezo pickup to a separate channel on your mixer and blend the two. I picked up a couple of used direct boxes for $15 each recently, so there are deals to be had if you look.

[kurtdaniel]

wonder y,, i added an Epiphone pup to my yamaha acoustic to play guitar and id have no prob with it plugging directly to a pa..