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Piezo question

Mostly I play Metal and Rock. But, I also play acoustic, worship, and pretty much anything. I have a gibson les paul, and fender strat. I want to get an ESP/LTD, I was eyeing up a few with no Piezo pick-up/bridge. I like the color of them a bit more than the two peizo versions available. I want a faster neck than my fender and gibson. To play faster leads. Jackson usually is where that is at, but ESP is taking over? Or just becoming a go to for the fast neck.

So.....With Bias FX, Tone Stack, I can get some great acoustic sounds. Do I need a piezo option on a guitar? It sounds very nice in demo's I've seen. Would I still be able to use it for metal, they have two 1/4 guitar jack inputs. So I can override the piezo, just use piezo, or blend the two.

Anyone have any idea's? I know nothing about piezo's, and what options sound wise I would have.

Thanks.
Jason

https://www.espguitars.com/articles/2007152-what-is-a-piezo-pickup

Comments

  • Piezo is definitely nice to have but I think in metal wouldn’t be essential if you have a tone fitting what you want already. I have a bass guitar with a piezo and magnetic J pickup blend and I find that the piezo helps to blend with acoustic instruments or sound fuller solo (it has a more evenly balanced frequency range than magnetic pickups) but almost as soon as any electric instrument, amplified volume or drumming/percussion is introduced then I pretty much immediately blend out the piezo. The mid-heavy tone of the magnetic pickups sits much better in that kind of mix and allows me to get a better overall level and blend.

  • edited September 2018

    Bernie Marsden once said to me: you pick up any guitar, plug the cable in a Marshall and turn the volume up. That’s all you need. :smiley: this was in an instrument shop, and the old man really could play - just some fun facts.
    I’d love to try a Piezo, but the shop just foreclosed.

  • I dont think piezos sound good in electrics. I have an Italia Mondial with one, and thats a semi hollow, and it is kinda a cool gimick, but I never felt like recording with it. Just sounds, okay.

  • @Multicellular said:
    I dont think piezos sound good in electrics. I have an Italia Mondial with one, and thats a semi hollow, and it is kinda a cool gimick, but I never felt like recording with it. Just sounds, okay.

    I had a electric guitar with piezo and i think the piezo pick up was capable of nice sounds. However other pickups were active, so the piezo also sounded like it started distorting very easily and created horribly loud metallic noises if you played the strings too loud and didnt have the piezo volume almost all the way down. It didnt sound like a normal acostic at all. Eq'ed right, with clean sounds and played gently it sounded nice, but quite different from anything else, more like a electric guitar through weird ass sound processords than acoustic

  • @ToMess said:

    @Multicellular said:
    I dont think piezos sound good in electrics. I have an Italia Mondial with one, and thats a semi hollow, and it is kinda a cool gimick, but I never felt like recording with it. Just sounds, okay.

    ....more like a electric guitar through weird ass sound processords than acoustic

    Thats a good description.

  • edited September 2018

    The main use I found for a piezo was adding ‘fullness’ to solo or sparse sounds (blended with a magnetic pickup). In a busy mix it certainly is much easier to make it sound bad than a magnetic pickup.

    The core sound of an electric guitar comes from a magnetic pickup, so piezo is really a supplement to that which has a few ‘utility’ use cases.

  • Wow, thanks everyone! I appreciate the thoughts and comments. I think I am leaning towards no - piezo. Though, I'm at least 6 months away from being able to buy a guitar anyway, I like to research for that long anyway.

    Thanks again!

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