New Thread Piezo

[dilznik]

That's interesting to hear. I wound up asking the question to PRS Customer Service and got the following response (note this os specific to the HBII Piezo). I wonder what the difference might be with how your piezo preamp is able to blend the two signals together without issue while the PRS one apparently is not able to.

I am thinking about potentially giving up the option of blending the mag and piezo together and going with separate outputs for each (there are already two output jacks). I am in the middle of installing the Fluences into a different guitar to get reacquainted with them again before considering the plunge of modding up a Wood Library PRS.

All signal (both Piezo and Magnetic) will pass through the Piezo circuit board of a HBII Piezo, so it would require some significant modifications to the Piezo board and volume components in order to achieve a setup with an active set of pickups, such as the Fishman Fluence set.

Our tech had advised that the change in volume pot value in order to accomplish this typically either results in a bad sounding Piezo signal, or bad sounding magnetic signal, depending on your choice of volume pot value.

The other workaround to this would be to install a completely separate active circuit for the the Fishman circuit, but then you lose your ability to blend the two signals.

Generally, we wouldn't advise this since it would change the overall layout of controls and affect signal in a way that we believe doesn't sound as good as the original parts.

Interesting. Sounds like they use a completely different type of system. The GHOST system lets you keep everything separate. Actually, the signal runs through the onboard preamp as well but it doesn't matter what pickups I use. Probably because it's designed as an aftermarket system. It's very well thought out. I don't blend though. I just have a three way switch to select one or the other or both. When I use it, which is rare these days, I run that into one of these https://www.radialeng.com/product/pz-select

 

[dilznik]

One problem I have run into in the past when installing the Ghost system is the clearance under the saddles. If there isn’t enough clearance the wires will kink and bind and you won’t be able to adjust the saddles low enough. Other than that it’s a great system and it looks like you have it handled. Nice job!

That's why you just drill some holes in your bridge and run the cables into the trem cavity and then to the main cavity. Easy peasy! But a one way trip.

 

[frankencat]

Yes that works well with a trem bridge, you just have to be careful how you route the wires in the cavity so they don’t get pinched when using the trem. I have had the issue I mentioned with flat fixed bridges like the Hipshot fixed bridge. It takes some creative drilling and routing to make a clean installation.