Yamaha System 72 SRT Piezo

[neilca]

I have a Yamaha AC1R with a system 72 piezo pickup. The guitar sounds great acoustically. Plugged in it has a metallic ring that I think is coming from the B string.

I am thinking about replacing the piezo either with a factory one or an aftermarket one. Anybody dealt with this?

[YamahaGuy]

Some under saddle piezo pickups will have one or two strings ringing out louder than the others. To remedy it, the bottom of the saddle can be filed/sanded to relieve the contact with the pickup. I had to do it on a Rainsong guitar once.

The six crystal pickup Yamaha uses is better than many others on the market.

I swapped out the pickup in my Ibanez AW54CE with one from GFS guitar fetish -- a soft attack one, with good results.
https://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Pie...ck_p_6436.html

Did the problem develop after a string change or saddle swap?

[neilca]

I had not played this guitar through an amp in a while. I did just change the strings and plugged it into an amp and noticed the noise. Did it do it before? Honestly, I don't know. The strings are 10-46 phos bronze.

I tried a bone saddle in either my AC1R or the AC3R and I remember it did not like that and I put the stock Yamaha saddle back in.

Would you say this system 72 is a good system? The guitar fetish piezo is out of stock right now, I checked.

[YamahaGuy]

Originally Posted by neilca

I had not played this guitar through an amp in a while. I did just change the strings and plugged it into an amp and noticed the noise. Did it do it before? Honestly, I don't know. The strings are 10-46 phos bronze.

I tried a bone saddle in either my AC1R or the AC3R and I remember it did not like that and I put the stock Yamaha saddle back in.

Would you say this system 72 is a good system? The guitar fetish piezo is out of stock right now, I checked.

The system 72 is better than the Fishman sonitone in my opinion. It's possible the pickup moved slightly and the saddle is not seated correctly. It can happen during string changes or saddle changes. The shape of the saddle is important as it needs to match the profile of the pickup so all the strings ring out evenly. Some are perfectly flat. Some have a slight radius to them. I believe that the preamp allows for any pickup with a 2.5mm plug to be plugged in. GFS has other pickups as well. https://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Sur...ug_p_6423.html the transducer would give a more natural sound and not be subjective to the unbalance string issue.

I had to shape a few saddles on SRT equipped Yamaha guitars to get the strings to balance across all six. It takes some time but is worth it. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, a decent tech should be able to handle the job.

[neilca]

Originally Posted by neilca

I had not played this guitar through an amp in a while. I did just change the strings and plugged it into an amp and noticed the noise. Did it do it before? Honestly, I don't know. The strings are 10-46 phos bronze.

I tried a bone saddle in either my AC1R or the AC3R and I remember it did not like that and I put the stock Yamaha saddle back in.

Would you say this system 72 is a good system? The guitar fetish piezo is out of stock right now, I checked.

Apparently, I put the bone saddle in the AC1R and did not take it out. I pulled the saddle today to level it and found it was made of bone. I put the stock saddle back in and the terrible metallic noise went away.

The moral of the story is don't mess with what the Yamaha engineers deem good ; )

[YamahaGuy]

Originally Posted by neilca

Apparently, I put the bone saddle in the AC1R and did not take it out. I pulled the saddle today to level it and found it was made of bone. I put the stock saddle back in and the terrible metallic noise went away.

The moral of the story is don't mess with what the Yamaha engineers deem good ; )

Glad you got it sorted out!