It’s ok if you need a breather - I made a cup of tea at this point.

They pop out easily enough if you ever need to work on these. Oh, and there’s a couple of little round inlay dots to cover the screw heads. The string saddle fits in the usual slot in the bridge where it presses on the metal strip (and therefore the piezo elements). The screws pull the whole unit up to the bridge and press the metal strip along the tops of the elements. A hole at each end accepts the mounting screws which screw into the housing.Īnd the whole thing comes together. The piezo elements, with their little caps, poke through the holes in the bridge and protrude into the saddle slot. There’s a lot going on here so I’ve made another diagram showing a cross-section through the bridge and guitar top. It mounts through a slot in the guitar top/soundboard and each piezo element has a corresponding hole in the bridge. This whole contraption hangs under the bridge. The caps form part of the unit’s shielding. Their bottoms contact the PCB beneath and each has a snuggly-fitting metal cap on top. Six of them (one for each string) sit in a holder (some polymer, maybe silicone). The elements are cylindrical, not unlike the pole piece slugs in an electric guitar’s magnetic pickup. Compared to a regular under-saddle pickup, they’re huge. This acts as the positive conductor and its job is to pick up the signals generated by the piezo elements. The housing has a threaded screw hole either end for mounting and a receptacle to hold the rest of the parts.Īnd the first into that receptacle is a printed circuit board (PCB). This is a serious hunk of metal (aluminium or an alloy thereof) to stick in an acoustic guitar.

The first thing to note is that big housing at the bottom.

Takamine serial number