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Does a Bigtone pickup in the bridge affect the unplugged pure acoustic sound?
pdg
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A friend of mine bought a used high-end GJ guitar in which someone had installed a bridge with a Bigtone pickup in it. He mainly plays unplugged. It's not easy to experiment by switching out that bridge for a purely acoustic bridge. So I'm wondering whether anyone has compared the pure acoustic sound of a good guitar with and without a Bigtone-containing bridge?
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It depends on who made the bigtone (there isn’t one source for these, luthiers make them by installing a piezo sensor inside a Gypsy bridge.) Some suppliers use a very heavy, overbuilt bridge which will mute acoustic tone/projection. The Dupont bigtones don’t have that problem as they use Dupont’s bridge which is ideal in terms of shape/weight/and wood quality and in most cases will actually improve the acoustic sound of the guitar.
I can't compare, but it might be relevant that my Shelley Park came with a Bigtone. As did the Dell'Arte that was my first GJ guitar. Given the Bigtone's structure, I find it hard to imagine that the pickup element does much to the acoustic sound. (I have three flat-tops with the old Baggs Dual Source pickup system's under-saddle element and don't hear any degradation there, either.)
The only thing I don't much like about the Bigtone design is that the signal wire goes through the top, which makes fully removing the bridge complicated.
Is the Bigtone not a specific brand?
Michael, what's your state of the art choice for a piezo for a GJ guitar these days?
Do Dupont Bigtone bridges have any identifying mark on them?
‘Bigtone’ refers only to the piezo sensor itself. Luthiers will then mount that sensor within their own bridge so you’ll get different results depending on who made it. Also, some “bigtone” pickups are not bigtones at all as a different piezo sensor was used (these ones usually have much lower output.)
The bigtone is still the gold standard for a Gypsy jazz piezo. Having the element within the bridge solves the two biggest problems with piezo pickups: feedback resistance and overtone ringing. All the other systems are mounted on the top (either inside or outside) which leaves them more prone to feedback. They also tend to pickup a lot more random overtones and “reverb” in the guitar and not nearly as much of the fundamental pitch as the bigtone does, resulting in much cloudier, diffuse, and overly reverby sound.
Yes, they will have the Dupont bridge size #s stamped on the underside of the feet. However, these often get sanded off when the bridge is fitted.
Great question. I have a Gitane 370 with a superb bigtone set into the underside of a very nice rosewood bridge. It's been glued into the cutout, so I imagine the impact on acoustic tone is minimal.
My David Hodson 503 however, came with a bigtone which sat in a slot in the top of the bridge with a separate ebony insert which the strings sat on. The sound from it was ok, but I was convinced the acoustic sound was being compromised, partly as the bridge itself didn't have a cutout and was heavy, and partly because that insert was sitting on the bigtone. Replacing the bridge (and removing the bigtone) has definitely improved the acoustic tone. It's a great guitar.
My friend's ERG (Polak) had a similar setup, but the bigtone was not working. I changed that too, and we're convinced that's had a positive effect too. Again, more to do with the bridge design and where the bigtone strip sat.
Where in the bridge was your friend's bigtone installed?
Unknown (a previous owner switched out an all-acoustic bridge, I believe).
I did a swap for a friend once whose "bigtone" wasn't working. I got it working but ended up taking it out and leaving a new bridge because the guitar was breathing a lot better and my friend liked the sound a lot better. As Michael said, it all depends on who made the bridge with a pickup in it.
But I'd think you can still put acoustic bridge in there. As long as the bigtone has enough wire slack to just hang to the side.