Piezo pickup under Mastery bridge?

[mathias]

Hey all,

I’ve got a Jazzmaster that I wired up normal (Including a rhythm circuit) but had a middle pickup cut in the pick guard, and then wired in a third pickup with a three way switch on the jack, so that I could do normal pickups, normal pickups + middle, or just the middle pickup.

I was looking at it recently and debating moving a pickup behind the bridge. But I don’t particularly want to route the body for a pickup behind the bridge.

What if, instead, I ran a piezo pickup with the wire going through the bridge ground wire hole? Would attaching it to the body pick up anything, or would it have to stick to the bottom of the trem? Does it just make noise or could I actually get signal through it, particularly if I strum the strings behind the bridge? Just curious if anyone has tried something like this.

(I think it’d be really cool to be able to run that third pickup isolated through a bunch of gain and delay and then loop it for end of the world noises.)

[coldbrightsunlight]

I have done this exact thing by taping the piezo to the bottom of my jaguar bridge. Though, bridge doesn't have a ground wire hole (the pickguard does but the body doesn't) so the wire just runs under the pickguard.

viewtopic.php?f=192&t=60797

I've improved the look of it using sellotape rather than the masking tape shown here in the proof of concept, haha. Can't even tell it's there unless I look close.


The output is neeeaarly as much as the bridge pickup and it sounds really great - picks up noise from both sides of the bridge roughly equally. When I run it and the bridge pickup at the same time it's like adding a strange reverb to the sound, it's exactly what I wanted.

[mathias]

Thanks! That’s what I think I’m after, too!

[coldbrightsunlight]

One of the best and by a huge margin the cheapest mod I've done to a guitar