DUAL Piezo Transducer Instrument Pickup/Piezo Contact Microphone Guitar Horn Kalimba etc

I bought this pickup to amplify my upright bass. I have had the bass for 15 years and always fought with mics to amplify the bass, as do most bassists. The bass is a Cremona student bass, which is pretty cheap at 1000 bucks (for uprights). So it didn't make sense to put a 300 dollar pickup on a bass I got for 600 and a trade 12 years ago. I looked a several options, K&K, Gage Realist, Fishman, and so on, and only mostly liked the way any of them sounded. And some of them were WAY out of my price range. I thought I had settled on the Shadow two pickup system, but just wasn't really happy with it. Then I decided to build my own. After pricing the components to build my own and factoring in labor and mistakes I continued to look. Well, I had seen this pickup and I knew of Belcat from my days in music instrument retail. Their Fishman knockoff pickups and preamps sound pretty good, so I decided it was worth 30 bucks to give this a try. I am glad I did. I mounted the two transducers on the upper side of the bridge, one between the E and A and one between the D and G. The one between the E and A I placed closer to the strings than the one between the D and G. These two piezos are wired to a mono plug, so I did this to try to balance the basses natural tendency to be louder on the treble side. It worked very well. By itself it is almost a perfect reproduction of the basses sound. Unlike the cellist that reviewed this pickup I found that it had plenty of gain to drive my Peavey TKO 65 Bass/Keyboard 15 inch combo (I use it for small venues and as a stage monitor in larger ones as I prefer to go through the PA for amplification). Paired with my LR Baggs GigPro, it sounds REALLY GOOD! Like the other reviewer said, it is hot, meaning it picks up everything. This can be tamed by isolating the wires so that they do not touch the instrument. I did this by looping them through the wing holes of the bridge and using foam to hold them in place. This is important as the wires of any piezo transducer are microphonic for three or four inches. The other thing I did was to use a 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch adapter at the plug as this comes with a 1/8 inch plug and a 1/8 to 1/4 inch male to male cable. This allows me to go straight from the pickup to the amp without a preamp using my good heavy gauge cables and not the light gauge one included. I like this pickup so much that I am probably going to buy a couple more for other instruments (classical guitar). Search Belcat EGT-202 to hear it in use on a classical guitar. For 30 bucks you can't go wrong with this pickup.

I use these pickups on a new Shen SB80 double bass. I wedged the pickups into the little heart shaped holes in the bridge. The first problem I encountered was really low output coming from the pickups. The problem is that piezo pickups have pretty low electrical resistance (20K - 40K ohms), and as a result you not only get less desired sound output, but the output you do get is often drowned out by the inherent noise of the instrument itself (think extra loud noise when you bump the bass' body but not so much sound when you pluck a note). The solution was to buy a preamp. I picked up a Behringer ADI21 acoustic preamp to boost the output resistance to over 4 MOHM. This took the majority of the noise out of the sound and increased the output of the pickups for the right sounds. The next issue I encountered was a ground hum, much like one would get with a poorly grounded guitar. What I did to alleviate that problem was take a single strand of copper wire from the shielding of an old instrument cable, and wrapped it around all of the strings between the tail piece and the bridge, grounding them all together. Completely removed the hum. So after some trial and error, I was able to get a great bass sound for very little money (I bought the pickup for ~$22 and the preamp for ~$45). I hope this helps. If anyone has any questions just reply to the comment and I'd be happy to help.

Decent quality, the sound fidelity isn't spectacular but good enough for a first pickup for my cello. I'm going to have to get a preamp, though, because this doesn't send a strong enough signal to my Fender amp to be useable in a gig setting. It picks up everything, which is a bit annoying; bow hair sliding across the string, every little movement of your body against the cello, and sometimes even voices if the cello picks up the resonance. Gonna keep using it, since the difference between this one and a "better" one is a different mount system and at least $100. Very good quality for a $25 pickup.

I bought this as a very cheap way to plug in my 12 string guitar.The signal from this is very weak. I connected it through an effects pedal that had volume control and cranked the volume to get a decent signal strengthThe double sided tape doesn't seem to stick very well and I think it would pick up more sound if it had a more secure way of attaching.It would be more useful if it came with a direct 1/8 to 1/4 adapter instead of the 1/8 to 1/4 cable which seems to be very light and may further reduce the signal strength.

I used it for one month and it broke.

The impedance of the Piezo is too high to work with standard low impedance audio systems. You will need to purchase a impedance converter like the ones used in the old days to use a record player with standard line inputs on a stereo. You can get them for around $20-$30

I am using it for stand up bass. It works quite well, even without a pre-amp. This is a big improvement over microphone on the bass, particularly from a "feedback" standpoint. I am plugging it into a Roland Cube 100 bass amp, and it is appreciated by the audience and the bass player.

Honestly this transducer is awful in compared to others Ive purchased. I went based on customer reviews, and I have no idea what people are thinking. I tried it on my banjo and my acoustic guitar and the frequency is way too slow and not receptive enough to sound. I recommend the Tyler Mountain pickup which is far superior in sensitivity.