![]() Indeed, even the “standard clean” sound people associate with the above instrument is actually result of amplifying them with a nonlinear, possibly tube amp without HF tweeter – again, like you do with guitar. They are mostly useful for processed, loud, possibly distorted sounds, in which case it anyway sounds basically like a different instrument. In summary, it is absolutely possible to use electric-guitar-style pickups on non-guitar string instruments, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to retrofit an acoustic instrument with such PUs. The Hammond organ uses magnetic PUs on tone wheels.Not too surprising – a completely clean electric guitar also doesn't have the depth / resonance of a mic-recorded acoustic guitar. These sound much closer to an acoustic piano than Rhodes or Wurlitzer do, but still strangely sterile in the dry signal. The Yamaha CP-80 (and its siblings) is an almost fully-featured grand piano, but built with the intention to be played amplified with its magnetic PUs, not acoustically. ![]() ![]() A Rhodes is actually rather an electric Celesta, rather than -piano, and that's the main reason these instruments sound very different from piano. However they do not have strings – the vibrating elements are solid metal plates. The two most famous models of electric piano, the Rhodes and the Wurlitzer, both use magnetic pickup.The Clavinet is almost the same as the baroque acoustic clavichord (a string instrument with a different hammer mechanism from piano), and indeed in single notes you can hear the semblance – but while the clavichord is infamously quiet and only useful for very delicate chamber music, the Clavinet benefits from the amplification option and has become famous for a relentlessly bright, highly rhythmic sound, best associated with funk songs like Stevie Wonder's Superstition.They all sound significantly different from their acoustic pendants, but that's in a sense a feature – some of these sounds have become legendary and now feature in almost any digital keyboard! But it very likely could be done.Ĭontrary to what some of the other answers have implied, there are actually a whole bunch of keyboard instruments with magnetic pickups, essentially analogous to electric guitar PUs. There would be lots of math to sort out the gauges and pitches and the resulting tensions. But maybe you could custom make a smaller harp that uses a combination of electric guitar and electric bass strings. For harp it might get tricky because I think the largest harps have strings that are longer than electric bass strings. For a zither you might be able to cobble together various electric guitar strings. The next problem is finding strings made from magnetic alloys of metal that are available in the gauges and lengths necessary for the instrument. You could tack several guitar pickups to a board and arrange them to cover all of the strings (if they would all fit) at least as a prototype. So designing such a pickup, or really several pickups, to capture all of the strings of a harp or zither would be a challenge and somewhat expensive. Magnetic pickups as used in electric guitars have to create a magnetic field that includes all of the strings and the field has to be very close to the strings. Regarding an electric harp or zither, there are some serious challenges. The combination works quite well and is used by professionals in live and recording situations all the time. The piezo pickup compliments the mic nicely because the mic is so close that it can’t pick up all of the nuances. Mic distance is a great way to get signal isolation so even though there is a mic involved, it’s so close to the source that the ambient noise is drowned out. One very popular way to use piezo pickups on instruments with strings and soundboards is to combine a piezo pickup with a small, clip-on microphone that basically attaches to the instrument somewhere very close to the sound board. That means each pickup has to be amplified, processed, and mixed, but this is done in special circumstances. For larger sound boards, like piano or grand harp, multiple pickups would help capture the full range. That said, if you have a lot of ambient noise and you must have a direct sound, this is one option. ![]() People rarely actually do this because piezo pickups have a brittle sound quality that is hard to make musically pleasing. ![]() There are contact piezo pickups that you can essentially stick or glue on to any sound board and then when properly amplified (a mic preamp usually works well), you get a signal from the instrument you can record without using a mic. You can record almost anything with a piezoelectric (“piezo” for short) pickup.Ī piezo pickup works by generating a small electric current when it is moved or flexed. ![]()
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