. . . animations which visualize certain concepts concerning Vibration and Waves (sound and light).
Piezo Questions & Answers The following are excerpts from the many emails received by our technicians.
Question: My Piezo Transducer has a volume dropout on some strings. What is the cause of this?
Answer: Many Piezo Transducers do not put enough down pressure on the piezo material located under the bridge saddle. This causes uneven volume and amplitude dropout on some of the strings. The result produces a very uneven string to string sound balance.
Solution: Utilize a system which conforms to the shape of the bridge saddle slot. Tone Hound Acoustic Sensor elements are wrapped in multi-webbed shield material and placed on top of AFTM Polytrans material. Polytrans is a new space age material designed specifically for acoustical frequency transference and projection. Volume dropout is eliminated once the acoustic guitar saddle has settled. This usually only takes a few hours, but can last up to a few days, depending on how much variance is found in the surface slot. It must be noted however, that if optimal frequency transference is to be obtained, the piezo material should not be required to conform to a surface slot variance no greater than .0396 mm.
Question: What makes your unit different from a Fishman® transducer unit?”
Answer: The Fishman® units do not test anywhere near the same. Data spectrum analysis shows that Fishman® and Highlander® units are using equalization, which tries to make all instruments sound like what their engineering tech thinks an acoustic instrument should sound like. This also makes all instruments using the same pickup system sound the same. Therefore, Fishman® transducers make your instrument sound like a Fishman®. Highlander® transducers make your instrument sound like a Highlander®. Unlike these representative examples the Tone Hound Acoustic Sensor is designed to pickup the exact sound of each individual instrument. Your sound is the sound of your own unique instrument.
Question: The new Lloyd Baggs system that utilizes 6 individual volume controls, one for each string. Is it worth the investment?
Answer: Competition is always good for the industry. It pushes the envelope of creativity and scientific enlightenment. Giving the user more control of their sound is what Erickson Design Associates is all about.
The effect of controlling 6 individual piezo outputs to produce balanced string output signals, could be very desirable. But a huge problem enters the equation when you consider that controlling the output is compounded by each strings motion or displacement which rapidly changes with string length. This is further complicated by the fact that wound or wrapped strings change amplitude at a much different rate than plain strings. To correctly adjust all the string outputs so they sound balanced over the entire fingerboard and the entire frequency spectrum is next to impossible. Although the idea has great merit it is an adjustment nightmare. There are to many variables. It is almost harder to control than the Fishman® Blender® system, which utilizes several pickups and microphones and blends them together expecting more frequency response. The problem is, all you get is continuous phase variances and phase frequency cancellations. Both of the above ideas would require an oscilloscope to make the correct adjustments but with so many variables even with the oscilloscope you would have to guess which settings to use.It is this authors opinion that an instruments balance should be built into it. A transducer should only amplify the efforts of the instrument builder. Our data spectral analysis research has determined that in most piezo sensor systems the lower frequencies are missing due to the use of rigid ceramic piezo material or sensor displacement mode output to preamp mismatch. If the material cannot correctly flex (displacement mode) with the vibrations of the acoustic guitars top the lower frequencies will be missing. If the input requirements of the preamp are not met impedance mismatch will result in low frequency drop out. Because of this, the consumer will have to compensate, via the unnatural sound of an equalizer, for the loss of lower or bottom end frequency output. All this hassle is included in a price of between $330.00 to $550.00, which is also very prohibitive. Finally, once the time consuming and costly adjustment procedures are accomplished and the equalization analyzed one must ask, what happened to the original idea of reproducing the natural sound of the instrument and where did my original sound go?
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Tone Hound Acoustic Sensors®, Theory "Z"® Component Parts, Erickson Guitars® and Erickson Luthiers® are registered trademarks of Erickson Design Associates. Fishman®, Highlander®, and Lloyd Baggs® are not affiliated in any way with Erickson Design Associates. Fishman® is a registered trademark of Fishman Transducers Inc. Highlander® is a registered trademark of Highlander Musical Audio Products. Lloyd Baggs® is a registered trademark of the LR Baggs Company.
