novocasey1959 Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 I live in Australia. My Variax 300 has a dud piezo on the B string. Physical connections to bridge and internal board are live and OK, and there’s a very faint signal, but we can’t get the volume the same as the other strings. The diagnosis from my electronics engineer friend is that it’s most likely a dead piezo element. Google, Amazon and eBay searches for a replacement have proved fruitless. Can they still be obtained, and if so from where? Any help would be most gratefully appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psarkissian Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 There are piezos available for earlier version Variax. It may have to be special ordered. Log a Support ticket in your Line 6 account. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hurghanico Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 The piezo elements and the slots in the bridge where they are housed must make perfect electrical contact with each other otherwise the necessary ground contact does not work. Tiny pieces of skin from the palm of the picking hand, sweat and dust accumulated over time that get between the piezo and the slot can compromise the grounding and therefore the proper functioning of the piezo with bad symptoms like the one you described. Generally a thorough cleaning with isopropyl alcohol (it cleans perfectly, leaves no streaks and does not damage synthetic parts with which it may come into contact) of the piezo element (gently extracted from its slot being careful not to break the electrical wire that connects it to the invisible board underneath) and its slot, and doing if desired also a 180 degree rotation of the piezo to offer a new contact point to the string, brilliantly solve the problem of either the decreasing volume or the intermittent signal or the unnatural noise that can occur. More than once in years of intense use and only when necessary I have put some piezos of my Variax 700 back into perfect working order simply by doing as said above and it has always been a success. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ All about POD HD500/X help and useful tips 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arislaf Posted February 9 Share Posted February 9 These are the best replacement you can get. Improve your sound mate. I installed mine and runs better than before https://www.thomannmusic.com/graph_tech_ghost_saddle_set_pn800000.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mozart999uk Posted February 13 Share Posted February 13 On 2/9/2025 at 4:07 AM, arislaf said: These are the best replacement you can get. Improve your sound mate. I installed mine and runs better than before https://www.thomannmusic.com/graph_tech_ghost_saddle_set_pn800000.htm Hey my friend. How are things? How hard is it to fit these in place of the existing ones? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arislaf Posted February 13 Share Posted February 13 On 2/13/2025 at 6:18 PM, mozart999uk said: Hey my friend. How are things? How hard is it to fit these in place of the existing ones? Hallo there, all great, thanks mate! It is pretty easy to install them, the big difference is that the old, original piezo had just a single wire, going to the motherboard, while the graphteck has 2 (hot and ground). The hot you connect them to the motherboard (same positions as the original) while the ground you sum them to one (all together) and solder them to the grounding of the variax (honstly i made this operation 11 years ago and dont remember were was the grounding of the instrument) But i remember, that the blue wire was the hot, and the nakes the ground. Dont know if they changed the wires color after all these years, but i dont think so. Pretty easy to do alone, you need soldering iron, a screwdriver, and you are ready to go. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mozart999uk Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 On 2/13/2025 at 6:03 PM, arislaf said: Hallo there, all great, thanks mate! It is pretty easy to install them, the big difference is that the old, original piezo had just a single wire, going to the motherboard, while the graphteck has 2 (hot and ground). The hot you connect them to the motherboard (same positions as the original) while the ground you sum them to one (all together) and solder them to the grounding of the variax (honstly i made this operation 11 years ago and dont remember were was the grounding of the instrument) But i remember, that the blue wire was the hot, and the nakes the ground. Dont know if they changed the wires color after all these years, but i dont think so. Pretty easy to do alone, you need soldering iron, a screwdriver, and you are ready to go. Awww - thanks so much my friend. Helpful as always! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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