Greetings to all the lovely readers!
This blog is happy to have your eyes upon it.
So, not too long ago I bought a nice Deering Goodtime short-scale tenor banjo to use for my Heavy Blarney project. Not wanting to run the risk of wrecking it - (rash risks can ruin resources) - I decided not to do what I did with my last banjo. Which was to hot-glue my own DIY pickup onto it.
After looking around at the various pickup options available and then having a look in my wallet, out came the glue gun.
For those who haven't had a go at making their own piezo pickup before, here's a brief overview.
You will need:
- a piezo buzzer, or it might be called a piezo transducer, 2 to 3cm in diameter (from your local electronics shop)
- some shielded hookup wire (from somewhere like stewmac.com, or your local electronics shop)
- a female 6.35mm cable mount jack socket (I used this one. Well, actually I used a cheap one from the local electronics shop initially, but you'll see why I switched it out later...)
- a soldering iron
- a hot glue gun
- some velcro cable ties
- a banjo that looks like it's keen to be a hundred times louder than it currently is.
First you need to carefully open up the housing of the buzzer to get at the piezo element inside. The element is a shiny disc, and it's easy to bend it and wreck it.
Here's what the buzzer looked like to start with:
The specs are here.
I used a craft knife to cut away the black plastic housing, being careful not to cut my fingers off, because I knew I'd need them for the next phase.
Foolishly, I forgot to take a photo of what the piezo element looked like when I got it out. Here's what it looks like now it's installed.
Heh heh.. a lot of it is now hidden under a lump of hot glue, but you can see there's a silvery coating, and that's what the red and black hookup wires were soldered to. I de-soldered them, and then soldered on a length of my own hookup wire. The silvery part is divided in two (on my buzzer it was anyway). One slightly smaller than the other. I soldered the hot wire to the larger part and the ground to the smaller part. I don't know why, it just seemed right to me.
Make sure you figure out how long you want the wire to be - i.e. how far does it need to go to mount your output jack where you want it.
I left a little play in mine because I'm pretty good at misjudging things like that.
I took up the extra slack with a little bit of "Musician's Friend" (gaffa tape) around the banjo's tension rod.
As I said earlier, I initially used a cheap jack but after soldering it up and testing it, there was a horrible crackle whenever I moved around, and that kind of thing can make you want to burn a banjo, so I shelled out a hefty amount of dough for a fancier Neutrik jack. Well, they said it was a Neutrik, but when it arrived it was a "licenced by Neutrik" jack. Either way, it was much better quality.
Because I'm an idiot, I glued the piezo element onto the underside of the banjo head before I had soldered the jack on. This makes it much more awkward, and soldering is awkward enough already. So, if possible, measure it all up and solder the jack and the piezo disc on first, then glue the element to the banjo.
On my old banjo I cut the piezo element in half and put one either side of the bridge, but I found that this single element right in the middle, slightly back from the bridge, works fine.
Picking up my trusty glue gun again, I glued two velcro ties to the jack, and secured the jack to two of the banjo's tension hoops.
Using velcro ties means that, unlike my last installation, this one is easily reversible.
Finally I could put the resonator back on the banjo, and fire it up through an amp.
How does it sound? Like a big, loud, scratchy banjo!
Actually, with a bit of EQ, and/or a proper acoustic preamp, this would be pretty decent. Really, it's all you're getting if you buy a fancier piezo pickup, it's just they've done all the assembling for you, and perhaps made it a nicer shape or something.
Straight into an electric guitar amp it's always going to sound bad because they're not made for this kind of thing.
But I'll be using it through a PA, with an EQ pedal and a volume pedal, and that should be fine.
I'll try to record some audio samples soon and post them here.
Happy DIY-ing!
Bing
This blog is happy to have your eyes upon it.
So, not too long ago I bought a nice Deering Goodtime short-scale tenor banjo to use for my Heavy Blarney project. Not wanting to run the risk of wrecking it - (rash risks can ruin resources) - I decided not to do what I did with my last banjo. Which was to hot-glue my own DIY pickup onto it.
After looking around at the various pickup options available and then having a look in my wallet, out came the glue gun.
For those who haven't had a go at making their own piezo pickup before, here's a brief overview.
You will need:
- a piezo buzzer, or it might be called a piezo transducer, 2 to 3cm in diameter (from your local electronics shop)
- some shielded hookup wire (from somewhere like stewmac.com, or your local electronics shop)
- a female 6.35mm cable mount jack socket (I used this one. Well, actually I used a cheap one from the local electronics shop initially, but you'll see why I switched it out later...)
- a soldering iron
- a hot glue gun
- some velcro cable ties
- a banjo that looks like it's keen to be a hundred times louder than it currently is.
First you need to carefully open up the housing of the buzzer to get at the piezo element inside. The element is a shiny disc, and it's easy to bend it and wreck it.
Here's what the buzzer looked like to start with:
The specs are here.
I used a craft knife to cut away the black plastic housing, being careful not to cut my fingers off, because I knew I'd need them for the next phase.
Foolishly, I forgot to take a photo of what the piezo element looked like when I got it out. Here's what it looks like now it's installed.
Heh heh.. a lot of it is now hidden under a lump of hot glue, but you can see there's a silvery coating, and that's what the red and black hookup wires were soldered to. I de-soldered them, and then soldered on a length of my own hookup wire. The silvery part is divided in two (on my buzzer it was anyway). One slightly smaller than the other. I soldered the hot wire to the larger part and the ground to the smaller part. I don't know why, it just seemed right to me.
Make sure you figure out how long you want the wire to be - i.e. how far does it need to go to mount your output jack where you want it.
I left a little play in mine because I'm pretty good at misjudging things like that.
I took up the extra slack with a little bit of "Musician's Friend" (gaffa tape) around the banjo's tension rod.
As I said earlier, I initially used a cheap jack but after soldering it up and testing it, there was a horrible crackle whenever I moved around, and that kind of thing can make you want to burn a banjo, so I shelled out a hefty amount of dough for a fancier Neutrik jack. Well, they said it was a Neutrik, but when it arrived it was a "licenced by Neutrik" jack. Either way, it was much better quality.
Because I'm an idiot, I glued the piezo element onto the underside of the banjo head before I had soldered the jack on. This makes it much more awkward, and soldering is awkward enough already. So, if possible, measure it all up and solder the jack and the piezo disc on first, then glue the element to the banjo.
On my old banjo I cut the piezo element in half and put one either side of the bridge, but I found that this single element right in the middle, slightly back from the bridge, works fine.
Picking up my trusty glue gun again, I glued two velcro ties to the jack, and secured the jack to two of the banjo's tension hoops.
Using velcro ties means that, unlike my last installation, this one is easily reversible.
Finally I could put the resonator back on the banjo, and fire it up through an amp.
How does it sound? Like a big, loud, scratchy banjo!
Actually, with a bit of EQ, and/or a proper acoustic preamp, this would be pretty decent. Really, it's all you're getting if you buy a fancier piezo pickup, it's just they've done all the assembling for you, and perhaps made it a nicer shape or something.
Straight into an electric guitar amp it's always going to sound bad because they're not made for this kind of thing.
But I'll be using it through a PA, with an EQ pedal and a volume pedal, and that should be fine.
I'll try to record some audio samples soon and post them here.
Happy DIY-ing!
Bing
