Firstly I hope that this is the correct forum, as it is about piezo bridge pu's.

I am working on a project, and basically I want to use a piezo tunamatic based bridge. It is a blank canvas and I only want to use a piezo bridge pu.

Would a piezo be powerful enough to play rock, or would it need a boost or preamp in the circuit. Is this practically possible to do. I wold like a versatile option without using two technologies.

I know it would be better to use traditional humbuckers and that piezo gives you the acoustic sound of the instrument, but I have reason to not want to route pickups and I would like to get an acoustic feel when I want to, and also to be able to rawk. It is necessary to rawk at all time, but we all know this .

Anyone with experience?

Actually a further thought. This is a totally stupid question I am sure, but here goes:

Can you play slide with a piezo bridge? Does it sound the same?

Not sure on the slide question...you'd have to find one and try it out, my guess would be that would be very noisey due to the sensitivity of piezo in general....but who knows.

On the original question, I thing your best best would be to go synth. Look into RMC polydrives with the midi module, that way you can go full piezo and/or midi into a synth for any sound you can imagine. You're not going to be able to run piezo acoustic output directly into a guitar amp for distorted sound and come out with anything usable...but using the RMC polydrive you can go into a roland gr series synths or VG series modelers and go from there. The sounds are breathtaking and this is something I've been wanting to make a run at myself. RMC makes the products that are used by both Godin and Conklin.

depending on what piezo you buy will determine if you need a preamp. i have an lr baggs x-bridge on one of mine with a control-x preamp. i find the preampp unnecessary. its more of a blender circuit and less of a preamp, altough it does have a variable gain boost pot. the next couple of piezos i get will be without preamps, and i will be able to a/b the setups.
the versatility of the piezo is immeasurable. they are excellent and i will be putting in at least 3-4 more in my hardtail guitars. most notably my rg321mh.
as for output...keep in mind that you will more than likely be going to a different output for the piezo, so you can adjust the level seperately from the electric signal to get a better mix. and yeah...it can do rock, but there's not an overwhelming amount of acoustic in rock. its just nice to have it.


rich

Thanks for those comments.

This guitar will have no other pickups. It really is going to be just a piezo output.

Basically I am very limited on space, I could fit a normal pickup, but I don't want to for aesthetic reasons. It is a custom job I am building, partly inspired by a stand up piezo equipped bass with no other output.