#1

I’m in the process of creating a tactile ambient/noise box inspired by folkteks illuminist garden.

I picked up some piezos pickups on eBay. But now realise I’m not sure whether I should wire them in series or parallel. Gut says parallel. Anyone offer any thoughts?

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#2

From this page:

“In hooking up multiple piezos, you have a choice of whether to join them in series or in parallel. Because of the electrical nature of piezos, series connection yields poor results; parallel is the way to go. In practice this means: connect the hot lead from each of the piezos in the group to a common wire for the hot side of the output, and connect the ground from each peizo to a common ground wire.”

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#3

Cool. I’ll give that a whirl. Thanks.

#4

Also, photos of the build, please!!

#5

Will do! For 20 characters.

#6

https://youtu.be/p_NqX_Bvfxs

This was the video that I watched that made me realise I could make one. I may just send it into my OP1 or perhaps into a delay then reverb and see what happens.

I also stumbled on a thread on MW (sh!) that someone claimed to have repaired one and its basically a peizo, wires and a butchered behringer delay with “shoddy” workmanship inside.

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#7

Nice!
You definitely gave me an idea about building my own ambient machine box during xmas holidays.
Just ordered some piezos… :smiley:

How did you mount / tune the strings?
Are you using some kind of preamp for the piezos?
What are thos pots and switches on the box?

#8

The video isn’t mine, just one I stumbled upon in YouTube. I haven’t started yet! I’m not sure if I will copy the box in the video. Depends on the size of box I make I suppose. I’m going to try wiring the piezos directly to the jack then connect to my reverb and delay pedals. From there I’ll either plug into my amp, or use a virtual amp inside live.

#9

@steveoath … any progress?

#10

@fjna

Oh yeah. I forgot to post here as I put it in he goals2017 thread. Found a wooded crafting box, attached a bunch of guitar strings, soldered to a guitar jack and job done. Very low output, so ran it through a 1W tube amp head I have, then through reverb and delay. Sounds nice. In the summer LCRP ( think) my samples were made using it.

I’ll try and dig out some sounds after work.

box of tricks
box of tricks.jpg585×535 90.7 KB

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