Andre S Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 whats the differnece between an acoustic pickup and a piezo bridge pickup, why cant i use the acoustic pickup on an electric? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeRom Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 I can understand why an acoustic pickup wouldn't work with nylon strings but don't know any reason why it wouldn't work in an electric guitar. These type of pickups work with electrically induced vibration. Piezo pickups work with mechanical vibration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmeds Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 An acoustic pickup usually comes in 2 flavors: Piezo transducer or Contact transducer. Bridge Piezos are mounted inside the bridge, directly underneath the saddle. In it's unique position, the strings vibration travel directly into the pickup element. Because of this, some insist that piezo pickups do not accurately reflect the timbre of the wood or for that matter the whole instrument, rather, just the strings. Contact transducer pickups are similar in behavior to microphones and are favored by those seeking a more woody tone and natural attack characteristics. The tone tends to be more bassy. For an electric solid body, piezos are by far the favored option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobv Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 A piezo under-saddle pickup is only one type of "acoustic pickup." There are also microphones, contact pickups for the soundboard or the bridge plate or fingerboard, and sound-hole magnetic pickups. You should specify what you think is an "acoustic pickup" because so far all your questions and our answers have been at cross purposes. If I think your question is "why not use a magnetic sound-hole pickup made for an acoustic guitar and put it on an electric solidbody expecting it to sound like an acoustic ?" - the answer is that the strings on an acoustic make a different sound because they're attached to a hollow wooden guitar, as opposed to a solidbody electric, and the body is a tone filter. So you will not suddenly create those acoustic overtones if they weren't there to begin with. Maybe you'd be happier with one of the stomp boxes that tries to synthesize an acoustic sound out of an electric guitar's signal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rocketman Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 All good advice here. We can have some more fun by talking about optical pickups too... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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