midi guitar playing and gear

noswegwe | 1 Jun 2012 03:16

Piezo Tunomatic opinions

Hey gang,

Well, I wasn't really looking for one, but was in Guitar Center the other day and they had an almost-new Brian
Moore i2(? I think) Les-Paul type with 13-pin in great shape-- not a scratch. $499. I have a Yamaha G-50 that
I use with a strat-like and bolt-on hex pickup that does fine, but figured having a built-in would be nice,
and after playing the guitar I fell in love with how it plays and sounds at least with the mag pickups. I'd say
it's worth $499 even if it didn't have the piezo/13-pin. That turned out to be a good thing, because once I
got it home I found there's a problem.

I was able to do a quick check of the 13-pin function in the store using a Roland modelling amp that had a 13-pin
input. I didn't know how to check the piezos out but it seemed to work otherwise so I bought it.

I discovered once I figured out the piezo situation at home that the low E string was faint-- clearly the
piezo wasn't working there. So I checked out the insides, discover they use the RMC saddles and circuit
board, but after closer inspection I found that the saddle itself was the problem-- the wire looks like it
was glued on in some special way to the piezo component, not soldered, using some dark gray colored
material. So the piezo feature and the associated 13-pin is rather out of commission at the moment.

The guitar was still far cheaper than a new one, and given how cheaply made the RMC saddles appear to be, I
figure it's worth replacing the bridge-- but I'm thinking I'd rather not use another RMC given how it's made.

However, I'd rather not replace the 13-pin circuit board if I can avoid it, and I'd like to know what
tuneomatic piezo bridge would be the best replacement. You can buy a set of RMC saddles (just the saddles,
to put in an existing tuneomatic bridge) for about the same price as a Fishman tuneomatic and a Graph Tech is
about $60-$70 cheaper than either of those. I thought about perhaps seeing if I can get a single
replacement saddle out of RMC, and I'll check into that, but given they say "matched set" I suspect they may
say no and expect me to pay $250 for a set, at which point I'd rather buy a better bridge for about the same price.

So these are the questions I'm ending up with:

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Mark | 8 Jun 2012 17:06

Re: Piezo Tunomatic opinions

Sorry to hear you are having issues with your piezo bridge. I went through such an exercise awhile back with a
used Ghost tuneamatic; one of the saddles had excessive signal bleed from adjacent saddles. Not only was
it very difficult to troubleshoot, but it caused insane glitching issues. The acoustic piezo output
sounded fine though, as all those signals are summed together, you couldn't hear the bleed.

If you have narrowed down your problem to a single saddle, I'd recommend you replace just that saddle with a
RMC replacement. I'm not sure what RMC charges, but the folks at GraphTech offered to sell me a single
replacement saddle for $20, which was very fair. I'd suspect the price of the RMC would be similar. The tiny
e clips are hard to work with, but they are manageable if you are very careful and have a small flat blade
screwdriver and tweezers handy.

There shouldn't be any issue with replacing the RMC bridge with another one from another manufacturer, as
most of them are high impedance piezo crystals and should be interchangeable to a point. It might be worth
an email to GraphTech and Fishman and ask if they have any experience with replacements; for example I have
read that you can use the stock Parker Fly piezo bridge with Graphtech Ghost interface PCB's and they work fine.

If you do think about replacing the bridge, I can vouch for the GraphTech Ghost ResoMax bridge as being a
terrific unit. I finally replaced my very old GraphTech bridge with a new ResoMax, and the improvement in
tracking quality and output was drastic. Plus you can sometimes find them on ebay for $100 or less used.

BTW I'd like to plug the folks at GraphTech; I have never worked with a more helpful company. They provided
tons of helpful information, and went WAY beyond what I expected in their service and warranty.

Hope this helps with your problems and you can get them fixed.

------------------------------------

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noswegwe | 12 Jun 2012 08:33

Re: Piezo Tunomatic opinions


Thanks for the reply-- I contacted Brian Moore guitars based on the recommendation of another responder
and was able to order a replacment saddle from them.  Cost was about $80, so it may have been cheaper to go
directly to RMC, but it's still way cheaper than replacing the entire bridge.   I'm still waiting for it to
arrive so I don't have much to say beyond that.

--

Zinc

--- In midiguitar <at> yahoogroups.com, "Mark" <birchives <at> ...> wrote:
>
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry to hear you are having issues with your piezo bridge.  I went through such an exercise awhile back with
a used Ghost tuneamatic; one of the saddles had excessive signal bleed from adjacent saddles.  Not only was
it very difficult to troubleshoot, but it caused insane glitching issues.  The acoustic piezo output
sounded fine though, as all those signals are summed together, you couldn't hear the bleed.
> 
> If you have narrowed down your problem to a single saddle, I'd recommend you replace just that saddle with a
RMC replacement.  I'm not sure what RMC charges, but the folks at GraphTech offered to sell me a single
replacement saddle for $20, which was very fair.  I'd suspect the price of the RMC would be similar.  The tiny
e clips are hard to work with, but they are manageable if you are very careful and have a small flat blade
screwdriver and tweezers handy.
> 
> There shouldn't be any issue with replacing the RMC bridge with another one from another manufacturer, as
most of them are high impedance piezo crystals and should be interchangeable to a point.  It might be worth
an email to GraphTech and Fishman and ask if they have any experience with replacements; for example I have
read that you can use the stock Parker Fly piezo bridge with Graphtech Ghost interface PCB's and they work fine.

(Continue reading)