Favorite Hex PU for VG-99?

[aliensporebomb]

jburns:  I also am a Floyd devotee and have been for over 20 years.



Weirdly I don't have a lot of problems with the strings affixing to the hex pickup, I've got it slightly lowered and the bridge slightly raised and found
a good "mid point" for everything to be.

[jburns]

when i had my gr33 i could never get around that problem, at the end of my g33 days i had a plastic cover to stop the strings from catching, but still got the noise pulling the trem all the way back. the gk's do seem to be way better for the 99 which has alot of options for getting rid of that whole situation. if raising the bridge doesnt effect your action thats great. when i used ibanez rgs it kinda threw my setup off putting a quarter inch raise in the neck heel, just too much for me haha. im using setnecks now so i didnt wanna attempt any gk-ing when i bought the 99. gk-3 will fall short on any other device but as far as the 99 goes i think i might go to the gk-3 on my next gtr.

i liked the gk 3s better then the 2a's. to me they seemed slightly fatter/fuller. the vol knob placement is waay better on the 3 too.
wheras the 2a's seemed a bit brighter and clear. subtle differenes that i cant say ive messed with in anything other then the 33's.

but i stand by my ghost for playing quality since i view it to have more dynamic in picking.

[musicamex]

hi jburns.

the ghost, rmc etc are very different from roland, yamaha, and axon pickups.  the former are piezo and the latter are magnetic.  one of the early problems was caused by a magnetic pickup having a latency issue due to the translation of the vibrating string above the saddle into a  solid note signal the processor could understand and further do what the player intended it to do when they picked the string.  this used to be 2-3 cycles, so low notes inherently had more latency than high ones.  with a piezo (ghost rmc et al) the translation is far more instantaneous since the piezo saddle vibrates the instant the string is picked.  i find the piezo pickups also have far less adjacent string cross over and far more dynamics when using palm muting.  i have zero experience with baggs and fishman piezos for hex output. (i accept free samples for testing )

i'm not sure where you got the "generic" crystal information.  when i order bulk piezo saddles from ghost they are all shipped in the same bag.  there aren't E, A, D, G, B, e saddles---all come in the same bag.  RMC saddles are a bit different in their placement of the piezo element in the saddle but the overall quality of the individual piezo elements are more than adequade for their job in both ghost and RMC.  when you think about it, a piezo strip, like used under an electroacoustic saddle is in most cases one strip (ovation and perhaps others used 6 summed piezo element signals in their EA guitars).  the same strip works easily for the entire dynamic range of the guitar.  the piezos aren't rocket science and even if there is allot of variations in quality, you can bet at least ghost and rmc aren't vastly different in their approach to using quality components.  they both have excellent reputations.  the best processor in the world can't sound good if you feed it bad info. being on the cutting edge of guitar technology,  they know the GIGO rule better than most.

[jburns]

got that info from the owner of graphtech. is he lying? could be lol. a good enough sales pitch to get me to buy it =/

cant talk about rmc cause ive never used them but for fishman a luthier friend of mine, in battle for almost 40yrs and highly experienced, has told me numerous times that those cheap piezos cost 2 cents to make (yea obviously not rocket science like u said haha) and he usually has to send 4 or 5 back till he gets a good one. that guy wouldnt lie to me, eveytime i need help or advice hes always on the money.

[musicamex]

got that info from the owner of graphtech. is he lying? could be lol. a good enough sales pitch to get me to buy it =/

cant talk about rmc cause ive never used them but for fishman a luthier friend of mine, in battle for almost 40yrs and highly experienced, has told me numerous times that those cheap piezos cost 2 cents to make (yea obviously not rocket science like u said haha) and he usually has to send 4 or 5 back till he gets a good one. that guy wouldnt lie to me, eveytime i need help or advice hes always on the money.

 no one is lying.  there might be some "selling" going on.  you aren't far off on your price for basic piezo elements.  but like many modern electronic components, in manufacturing quantities there is little difference in price until you get into very high tolerance components.  competition is fierce and manufacturers will not tolerate a bad supplier, because one bad resistor that could cost less than a penny or two could cause an expensive complicated circuit to fail.  so when you are talking about a 2 cent piezo (actually more like 20 cents) why wouldn't you use a manufacturer with a good reputation that sells "consistent" quality even if it costs double?  what difference would $1.20 make for a  set of 6 saddles at such a critical point in the circuit?  

i have spoken at length with lee from graphtec (he is no longer with them) and their other techs at NAMM over several the last 5years in anaheim.  i also have met personally with and had a very informative discussion with mr Richard Mc Clish (RMC one of the more interesting v guitar people i have met); both companies through emails and in person.  these guys really know their stuff.  they know the entire signal chain begins with the saddle.  i have not had a single piezo pickup from graphtec fail and no new pickups i have used from RMC have failed and only one piezo saddle from rmc that has been on my bench needed to be replaced.  it was one of godin's very early multiac steel string acoustics.  it had been gigged hard and put up drunk, so i won't make a judgement about the exact reason it failed..  like i said i don't have any experience with the fishman or baggs saddles. I WOULD REALLY LIKE FEEDBACK RE FAILURES OF PIEZO SADDLES, ANY MAKE.  either i am having some really great luck or your luthier friend could have run into a bad batch?   were these piezo saddles  or acoustic guitar strip piezos? i know fishman piezo products hold a pretty nice part of the pie  the guitar OEM so i would appreciate feedback from someone that has used them. baggs too please.

[jburns]

the acoustic piezos. i think the problem was he was getting weak signals and distorted artifacts and always had to keep sending them back/reinstalling until he got clean ones.

[musicamex]

jburns, thanks for your reply.  i noticed in the survey here no one marked the fishman box.  maybe there was an early problem that has kept them off of the radar..there are a couple of fishman patents that go way back for variations of piezo pickups so i am surprised their QC didn't catch their rejects.

i learned the hard way with acoustic piezo strips that they don't like to be bent very much and the wire connections can be pretty fragile.  on some guitars like a takemini 12 string i did a setup on this morning, the piezo strip is housed in metal cover that the saddle clips into to protect the piezo strip.  fishman, like almost everyone has overseas factories and a new person on the assembly line could screw up a number or pieces really quickly on high production items before the error is caught.  i'm almost positive both graphtec and rmc use something like an o-scope test to be sure each saddle is "alive" on delivery.  tarina and or richard, please correct me if i'm wrong and if you are monitoring this board.