The name says it all. I'm still not sure about my results but it was fun to do at the least.

YouTube

Interesting concept...and I'd never heard of the driver before, but shows promise for alleviating the awful 'pickup sound' What amp source did you use to power it ?

Very clever! Thanks for sharing your experiment.

Nice job! Thanks for sharing.

I've heard of people doing a more primitive, but related technique, playing the DI sound through a normal speaker directly behind the guitar, then miking the body to capture some of the natural resonances. I'm pretty sure that method involved blending, not replacing the original track. It was certainly an improvement, but I'd bet your method sounds more natural.

I never heard of it either till a few weeks ago. I HEARD about people turning walls etc. into speaker but I didn't know what kind of drivers they were using.

I used a Samson 200-Watt monitor amp that live in my rack. The drivers are rated for 40 Watts and I was probably pushing it almost to its limit but it seemed to work.



I never heard about that but the thought crossed my mind, since I've used a similar trick for snare drum (for when people mic the top only and there isn't enough "snap"). Then I found out about these contact drivers...

that's fun!

but one can avoid issues to a large degree by using a di with a very high impedance such a the radial piezo di, grace design bix etc.

and of course one will add early reflections and small room sound (yes, the ugly one many think it should be avoided!) to mimic what happens to any mic at short distance from a source (but no large reverb in order not to blur image on fast playing) - speaking of image: to widen the image, eventide is the way to go (can't beat their dynamically moving micro-pitch shifters/delays).

No, I'm afraid all you end up with, by using high input impedance DI's like those you mention, or the Leon Audio (33 Mohm) box linked below, is a still-objectionable twanging pickup sound....but with better bass !

The following article outlines in great detail why pickups sound like they do, whether fed into typical low impedance boxes or better, high impedance models. At the end of the day, no matter how much you eq, add reflections or try to Eventide it away....it's still that signature pickup sound, it will never sound as natural as a miked guitar.

I will concede the combination of miked guitar and pickup/DI sound can be 'pleasant and commercial' and in that category I even include the pot-blended 'inside the sound hole electret mic plus bridge/piezo' of Fishman etc....but pickup/DI alone is what the OP is trying so admirably to get away from.

Active D.I. Box (direct box)

when comparing the piezo-di with di's of similar quality (jdi, jdv, firefly) the high impedance piezo-di makes a large enough difference to get noticed and appreciated by anyone who ever got to try it upon my suggestion - i got the tip from a classical guitar player who's been using the di to get his signal into a active speaker (genelec) for some amplification (and i was pretty much surprised by the result).

but of course the guy in the video came up with a wastly different and unique technique i have not seen yet which yields much different results than using any di - not a big surprise though: any signal obtained by a mic sounds different from a wire...

my point: use a high impedance di to start with - and then use re-amping and a mic as shown in the video - thx for the tip!

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and no, i'm not using the eventide to drown a signal in a huge wash of modulating pitchshifters and swirling delays (although this is lots of fun in some genre) but to create a very lively ambient sound: used with taste (and sent into quantec or other nice artificial room emulation device) it can yield results tricking you into believing that a signal cannot stem from a pickup - give it a try; ain't that difficult, can be very efficient and is not doomed to sound artificial.

It's definitely an improvement.
It does still have a bit of phasyness though.

Huub

In my experimentation I have found that the typical piezo "quack" has as much to do with headroom as next stage input impedance. The piezo is a pressure sensitive device, therefore the (somewhat) linear voltage output can vary dramatically depending on the strength of attack to the strings, often high enough to clip the next stage of amplification.

A combination of high impedance and high headroom characteristics in the buffer stage can yield a surprisingly pleasant outcome. Plugging a piezo pickup into such a device, such as the Pendulum SPS-1, will almost always bring a smile to your face.