Piezo saddles with MIDI interface- what is best? RMC or Graph-Tech? - created 12-19-2008

Swanson, Mark - 12/19/2008.20:29:04
MIMForum Staff, Michigan

I'm looking into setting up an electric guitar with the 13-pin MIDI output using the piezo saddles made by RMC or Graph-Tech. I have never worked with either of their systems and I would like to hear from anyone who has- tell me how they work, how they track, and if you ran into any difficulties.

Any comments, please!

There's this one from And this one from Graph-Tech

Mark,

I just finished a 4 string bass with the graphtech hexaphonic system that was developed recently for oem acoustic guitar. It works well and was quite small as there is a single, small pc board that's connected directly to the 13 pin jack. I did have to fabricate an aluminum jack plate for it which took way too long and I had some frustrations when i was integrating the piezo saddles with the magnetic pickups and 3rd party preamp at the other end. I don't know much about midi but I tested it out on a Roland VG-99 or some such trickery and it seemed to track very well. I wasn't too thrilled with the straight piezo signal but I don't think there was any form of eq for it on the hexaphonic board. As I've come to expect, blending magnetic and piezo outputs is never very satisfying since they are inevitably slightly out of phase.

The last RMC midi installation was a few years back on a 7 string classical guitar and that also seemed to track reasonably well though I can't say at all if one was better than the other. The non-midi tone from the guitar was excellent with the RMC so if I was looking for good tone then RMC probably wins hands down but if price is the consideration then the Graphtech comes in at about 1/3-1/4 the price. I should point out that the RMC saddles come extra tall and the legs need to be trimmed very precisely to get workable string heights. This meant a lot of tensioning the strings and untensioning them to get an accurate picture of what needed to happen next. If you trim too far, you've potentially blown a $55 saddle so it pays to follow the direction explicitly and start with the tallest saddles first. I think that first instal probably took a good 8-12 hours possibly more. It's the kind of job you can't possibly get paid for until you have several under your belt which will never happen unless you happen to live with dozens of experimentally minded guitarists that have day jobs in rare medical fields.

Customer service was excellent in both cases. Both Richard McClish and Morgan were thoroughly versed in their respective designs and implementations. More than once Richard answered 11PM Sunday night emails within minutes. Something any hack luthier can appreciate.

Thanks David, that helps! I talked to the folks at Graph-Tech, after that I pretty much decided I'd go with that system. Maybe your basses' acoustic tone had something to do with the fact that the unit you had was for acoustic guitar...maybe not.

I'm going to install this on a telecaster. From speaking with them, I am much more confident about it. We'll see!

The Graph-tec system really needs the acoustic preamp to sound good. It's the same size as the hexaphonic unit and the two piggy back together very cleanly.

You are talking about the preamp for the piezo saddles to give the acoustic tone. I would expect they need the preamp, and would sound quite lame without it.

The "hexpander" is a preamp of sorts but the acoustiphonic board has a filter section to deliver a more musical tone. It's usually a subsonic filter with some tweaking in the mids. I definitely noticed the thumpyness in the 10-80Hz without it. Kinda cool for solo but noisy in a group setting