Mbira
Well-known member
Hi guys,
I'm working on a new electric mbira, and again, I will be using a piezo array to drive a tube guitar amp. Despite the negative public opinion of the sound of piezos, they generally seem to work well for my needs, and you can't beat the price.
While I used to use one piezo, I wasn't happy with the balance of the instrument, so I started adding other elements and then doing a resistor array to balance each individual element to the others. The overall sound of the instrument is good then, but the problem is that now the whole pickup is very very loud compared to the output of my (already very hot) guitar. If I turn my guitar amp up to 4 with my guitar, I can only turn the mbira up to .5 to get the same volume. I'd like to put in a pad within the instrument to balance this out.
Here is an ugly diagram of what I'm doing. Please note that the 500K pots are wired there until I find the balance I like for each element, then the pots will be replaced with hardwired resistors.
Any feedback of how to make this process better would be very appreciated!
Please note that I don't have any plans to use a buffer. I'm not sure if it's because I'm using tube amps, but for some reason, whenever I have used a buffer, I literally can hear no difference in the tone at all.
I'm hoping for advice on:
how best to put in a pad.
If 500K is a good resistor divider value to be working with. (if I should be using much higher values, I have 1 meg and 10 meg resistors handy...)
Thanks!
And here's a pic of the instrument:
back (with the temporary pots wired in):
I'm working on a new electric mbira, and again, I will be using a piezo array to drive a tube guitar amp. Despite the negative public opinion of the sound of piezos, they generally seem to work well for my needs, and you can't beat the price.
While I used to use one piezo, I wasn't happy with the balance of the instrument, so I started adding other elements and then doing a resistor array to balance each individual element to the others. The overall sound of the instrument is good then, but the problem is that now the whole pickup is very very loud compared to the output of my (already very hot) guitar. If I turn my guitar amp up to 4 with my guitar, I can only turn the mbira up to .5 to get the same volume. I'd like to put in a pad within the instrument to balance this out.
Here is an ugly diagram of what I'm doing. Please note that the 500K pots are wired there until I find the balance I like for each element, then the pots will be replaced with hardwired resistors.
Any feedback of how to make this process better would be very appreciated!
Please note that I don't have any plans to use a buffer. I'm not sure if it's because I'm using tube amps, but for some reason, whenever I have used a buffer, I literally can hear no difference in the tone at all.
I'm hoping for advice on:
how best to put in a pad.
If 500K is a good resistor divider value to be working with. (if I should be using much higher values, I have 1 meg and 10 meg resistors handy...)
Thanks!
And here's a pic of the instrument:
back (with the temporary pots wired in):
