Reusing Variax Piezos - Nylon String classical Variax!

[robrochford]

Hi All

 

I have a Variax 300 that died when the batteries leaked battery acid and fried the circuit board. I wanted to do something interesting with the remains, and I have plenty of standard pickup guitars, so thought of creating a nylon strung guitar. To do this i wanted to use the existing piezos, wiring them to a standard jack port.

 

Does anyone know how to do this, or if it's even possible? Is it just a case of running wires from the 6 piezos to one output, or is some sort of preamp required?

 

Thanks

Rob

[psarkissian]

Is it the 300 with the single strip piezo or the six piezos in a bridge mount?

 

[robrochford]

6

[robrochford]

Could I run the 6 in parallel straight to a jack output?

[psarkissian]

No. And if you could, it wouldn't work on nylon strings,... not enough string tension to piezo contact area

pressure. It's why I asked about single or six separate piezos.

 

The 300 Acoustic Nylon, used a single slim bar type piezo, as it is much like a classical guitar bridge bone.

And so it requires less string tension to piezo contact area pressure.

 

The separate piezos are designed for our steel string/bronze string guitars.

 

[robrochford]

Ah, well that is disappointing to hear.

 

Not liking the sound of a piezo electric, it looks like this 300 is destined to be transformed into a standard p/u guitar :(