Official Luthiers Forum!

I'm wondering about the quality of piezo's on the market these days. I don't mess around with electronics much myself but rather just install whatever it is people want. I do tend to like the K&K or JBB style transducers for sound the best but in general I'm wondering about the over all quality. Is a piezo a piezo a piezo? Or is expensive X brand really better then cheap Y?

I ask because I just purchased the wrong X brand expensive piezo. I got it in the wrong string spacing so I have to buy the right one. In about 1995 or so I put a Fishman Matrix in one of my personal guitars and one day about a year ago the UST strip broke on it (my fault) so I replaced it with a cheap $10 Artec one and frankly I don't notice a difference but like I said I rarely use that guitar. I'm still using the same Matrix on board preamp just wired to a cheap UST strip.

So I got to thinking that since I now have in my possession the wrong expensive pickup (passive strip) for the current guitar I am building instead of sending it back I could swap it in my own personal one but will I really notice a difference?

I know there is only one way to find out but I am wondering what you all think about piezo technology in general. They are just crystals after all right? Probably made in the same factories too? Or are there really better quality controls, materials, engineering and so on that makes an $80 dollar price difference worth it?

I believe Artec simply flies below the radar --- in my opinion exceptional quality and performance for the $$$$



Exactly -- this is why many have determined that JJB products match or surpass K&K offerings.

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Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

Thanks Ken. I think you might be right too. Since that time that I installed one for myself I had recommended an Artec to a local starving artist musician, who is quite talented too, since he's low on cash and so far he has no complaints.

From what I've seen, all of the PU manufacturers use either a ceramic material like PZT-5 (lead zirconium titanate) or Kynar, which is polyvinylflouride that has been heated and stretched in an electric field. The ceramic has higher output in my experience, and tends to work best in small pieces, so if the PU has spaced out elements that's probably what it is. I've seen Takamine pickups built like that. Kynar may have a nicer frequency response, perhaps with less 'quack', and tends to be used in multiple continuous layers to raise the output. I believe Fishman used this, at least for a while. The differences in the pickups themselves are more likely to be in the nature of how well built they are, and possibly in some of the electrical characteristics. Piezos are tiny capacitors, so they tend to have very high impedance, which is why they work better into an amp with an impedance matching JFET pre-amp. Depending on the exact nature of the pickup material the impedance might be a few meg-ohms, or 'only' a few hundred thousand, but that probably won't make a lot of difference in the way they work.

Thanks Alan.