having an electric guitar with no pickups showing

axisus

I'm trying to make a guitar with a very clean/bare top - no pickups showing.

Could you get away with using just a piezo pickup as a replacement for magnetic, or would it sound a bit naff (playing it through your regular amp/effects etc)?

The only alternative would be some kind of stealth pickup. Anyone got any experience of one of those?

Funkfingers

The original Fender Marauder guitar tried the stealth pickup concept. Never heard of it? I'm not surprised. It probably got no further than the catalogue.

The Yamaha Attitude Custom bass guitar has a Mudbucker concealed beneath the pickguard. Its d.c. resistance is something over 30k. 

In-saddle piezo elements have a much cleaner *hi-fi* sound than magnetic pickups. If you do not like EMG guitar pickups, you will probably not like a piezo system either. The Line6 Variax used just the piezo, processed through digital modelling technology. Thus, to get any sonic variety, you are probably going to want some sort of multi-effect processor.

vasselmeyer

Variax transplant.

axisus

vasselmeyer said:

Variax transplant.

Actually that was my original plan and I even bought the old variax, but there's too much gubbins to fit my guitar design! Thus thinking about alternatives

BenSirAmos

Look out for a bridge from one of the cheaper Parkers. They come up sometimes as I found when one of the piezos on mine started to fail. They are meant to give an 'acoustic' sound. They fail at that - but still give a usable sound. 

ICBM

Piezos generally don’t sound good for conventional overdriven/distorted electric guitar sounds.

It’s not something you can fix with EQ, it’s a fundamental difference in the way the pickup works and which parts of the string movement generate the signal. A magnetic pickup senses the *movement* of the string and so produces its peak signal when the string is moving fastest, at the mid-point of the vibration; a piezo senses the *pressure* of the string on the saddle and so produces its peaks when the string is at the outer ends of the vibration. You can’t make one sound like the other without digital processing. (eg Variax) Distorting the result exaggerates the difference, if anything.

If you want a conventional electric guitar sound, some sort of hidden magnetic pickup is the better way.

Sporky

ICBM said:

Piezos generally don’t sound good

Steady on sir!

ICBM said:

for conventional overdriven/distorted electric guitar sounds.

Ah, ok, fair point.

I'd add to your bit that piezos also only sense movement in on dimension, whereas the vibration of the strings is much more complex (essentially it's like a triangle where the tip moves up and down the string and rotates around its centreline).

If there's an optical pickup for guitar (like the bass Lightwave system) that might sound more conventional. Ah - there is indeed.

https://www.willcoxguitars.com/product/atlantis-guitar/

barnstorm

The CS Stealth Esquires seemed to work okay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAR_yW2XCqw 

On his older guitars Peter Malinoski often just had pole pieces showing, which I thought was an interesting look:

earwighoney

barnstorm said:

The CS Stealth Esquires seemed to work okay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAR_yW2XCqw 

On his older guitars Peter Malinoski often just had pole pieces showing, which I thought was an interesting look:

Good call on the Malinoskis.  They look a bit funky but I think some of them sound truly incredible.  

ICBM

It's a real shame those Malinoskis are spoiled by using such clunky bridges, switches and brass slot-head screws holding the front panels on, or they would be some of the nicest all-modern electric guitar designs I've seen.

For what it's worth I tried a 'stealth Esquire' and found I couldn't get a neck pickup hot enough to balance properly with the bridge - even given that the Tele bridge pickup is meant to be louder than the neck - without it being so overwound that it just sounded like mud.

axisus

ICBM said:

It's a real shame those Malinoskis are spoiled by using such clunky bridges

100% right on that. They need something mush more modern. Look very cool otherwise

TheMarlin

Fret King did some custom models with hidden pickups.  Generally, the bridge pickup was in its regular position, the neck and middle were hidden under the pick guard. 

I think it used a super powerful P90, as that’s  the only way to get the pickup to sense the strings from under that plastic. 

No idea if they sounded any good.