A Cheapo DiY Shamisen Pick-up

Building/Repair
#1

Hey shamiseners!

I posted about trying out some contact mic stuff WAY back in November (see here ).

As you all know, life (and school) can sometimes get in the way and cause some delays.

Yesterday, though, I was making some piezo contact mics for another project and suddenly remembered to try sticking them onto my shamisen. Again, I’m not in a place where I can cut into my skin or otherwise alter my instrument, but I tried a few things, and wrote a blog post about it here:

http://simonhutchinson.com/2013/06/08/playing-with-piezos-a-cheap-shamisen-pickup/

Spoiler-alert: my $6 solution doesn’t have the best sound, but it might be something useful for live-sound support or running effects if you’re on a budget.

I’d love to hear what you think, and if you have any questions!

#2

YEAH! That rocks . . . :slight_smile:

can’t wait to give this a serious try myself on my shamisen - earlier I have done one on one of my sticks with strings I soldered 2 regular piezo discs (of different size and frequency spectrum about one euro each at the local electronics store) together (parallel I think) and to my suprise it worked! I had taken advice from a youtube video to heart that said it is key to solder as quick as possible in order to not overheat / destroy the piezo element in the process . . .

http://freecarvers.com/sem/pics/signalsem2.jpg

since that banana shaped stick was only a success in that regard and had no acoustic qualities at all I just tried it out and don’t play it like I said looking forward to install another self made on my shamisen complete with an extra hole in the dou for the jack like on that mugen one . . . :slight_smile: anyone know if only in general terms what kind of fancy looking “more than a simple piezo element” stuff is inside there?

http://dev.nipponscape.com/scape-en/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/shamisen26.jpg

#3

Thanks!

I don’t have one of these Mugen shamisen, but I’m betting that (in addition to having a better piezo than I used) the additional stuff in there is a little preamp, like having onboard active electronics on your guitar. Something like one of these:

http://www.guitarfetish.com/Onboard-Preamp-Clapton-Mid-Boost-Brian-May-Treble-Boost-Clean-Gain_p_571.html

Anyone own one of these and can confirm this?

In the recordings on my blog, I was running the contact mic out into my Presonus Bluetube Preamp to give me a bit of a boost.

#4

yeah I guess or could it even be an electronic effect circuit that alters the sound to make it more authentic sounding to compensate for not having a natural skin? and the most curious thing for me is that second wooden stick on the right side I mean what’s up with that and a cable attached to it no less?

amateurish guess I thought 2 discs could possibly produce more current and make it louder and I think I remember it being more than loud enough directly plugged into the marshal mini amp I have . . . I did not get much distortion out of it though . . . still I think it would work loud enough and get good distortion with a suitable effects pedal in between . . . anyway amazing I thought when this worked to my surprise I mean just attaching such discs to a cable and plug it into an amp and it works can’t say anything about the high fidelity aspect of that of course I will fool around with that also trying to shield what I can and use good cable and stuff when I get to doing that on the shamisen and try out various positions too . . .

#5

I don’t own one, but I’ve seen the insides of a couple (there are at least three or four that I’ve seen here in Australia). The metal box houses a pre-amp and 9v battery. The Mugen 21-labelled white plastic box houses slider pots which handle volume and tone controls. You can see how the red and black cables hook the controls back into the pre-amp. As far as I’m aware, most of the art is in the type and placement of the mic.

The pre-amp always seemed a little vanilla to me - the tone controls are voiced so that you can EQ at shamisen frequencies, but they just seemed like a passive two or three pole tone stack with no special sauce in terms of filtering or modulating the signal coming off the mic.

The black wire going off to the side of the dou is just grounding for the jack, I think. You can see a length of bus bar against the wood, and it doesn’t run back into the pre-amp. If it were doing anything clever like a quasi reverb spring, you would need to see a reverb driver and a connection back to the pre.

Because I don’t have a Mugen, my approach to running a pickup is a bit different. I use one of these:
http://www.b-band.com/index.php?mact=Products,cntnt01,details,0&cntnt01hierarchyid=2&cntnt01productid=1&cntnt01returnid=151

It’s a transducer in a thin ribbon style which I picked up for cheap on Evilbay. I place it on the front skin of my shamisen and put the koma on top of it, and tuck the jack/pre-amp in near the neo. It’s not exactly like the Mugen sound, but it’s pretty good and none of the Mugen owners has complained about it. The output is enough to drive whatever pedal and amp I’ve thrown at it (currently playing through anything from a Roland Cube 20 to a 30 watt Laney 2x10 valve combo).

In my experience, shamisen and distortion are a tricky mix to get right. The overtones (and the short note decay) peculiar to a shamisen give you some difficult things to work with, and the general lack of lower frequencies can really rob you of some of the material to drive a distortion so it can end up sounding pretty thin and fizzy. Happy to share what I’ve experimented with, it can just get a bit tedious for those who aren’t totally into discussions of the Most Awesomest Distortion Evah.

#6

Ha thanks for sharing :slight_smile: also I just noticed the jack cables have a plugin connection to the other cables I will definitely go for that or alternatively make the jack easily removable seeing I then can change the whole pickup system without having to solder around in the dou :slight_smile:

oh this should be fun with such an easy plug I could solder something different together every weekend and give another option a try :slight_smile: anyway I shall start with a simple passive solution maybe checking out some of those quality piezo elements for instruments rather than any piezo disc from the electronics store I plan to do some reading up on the topic in general to gain a basic understanding and might have a further question later on again thanks for that info . . .

#7

(does the mugen also have a plastic front skin?)

(edit: Kevin plays one with plastic skin it seems after giving those clips a closer look also there’s a similar thread with good links for inspiration of pickup design :slight_smile:

anyway since I don’t see an option to get natural skin stretched onto my shamisen at this point I am really to fool around with this electric and “whatever skin” option . . .

#8

Yep, all the Mugens I’ve seen have had a plastic front skin. It makes me wonder whether it just works better with a contact mic.

Another approach would be to use a reasonable quality clip-on mic and attach it to the interior of the dou. Again, placement is the tricky part and those sort of mics can have feedback problems.

Now you’ve got me thinking about booster/pre-amp circuits. I’ll do some research and see what’s out there.

#9

And so of course I go and look at Dave’s Mugens today, and of course he points out that his is dog skin on the front, not plastic. So it seems you can have your amp and your skin at the same time.

An idea I was thinking of playing with was running two mics in the dou. One would be a piezo on the skin, another would a small Fishman-style clip-on. The idea would be to build a little blend circuit into the pre-amp so you dial in the atmospherics from the clip-on while retaining the thwack from the piezo. You’d have to experiment a bit with levels and maybe feedback filters, but it might liven the sound up a little.

#10

ah thanks good to know what is out there I’ll likely (need to) go with all plastic I guess . . . although I bought wood blanks for the itomaki I didn’t work on the shamisen at all this weekend but I will likely be on vacation the whole July so I should have enough time to conveniently get to business then including the installation of a first pickup design . . .

#11

my advice as a musician whose constantly experimenting with contact pickups and placement for live performance would be to placed the pickup film directly under the bridge, that way the vibrations are in a direct line to the pickup, PUTW (pickuptheworld) do heaps of contact pickups specifically designed for ethnic instruments, i’m not sure they do shamisen but it might be worth a look :slight_smile: also, speaking from years experience in live performance with ethnic instruments at big festivals with big rigs and loud loud loud speakers, run your gear through a DAW eg - shami->NI komplete audio 6 interface->ableton->PA… digital processing can eliminate ALOT of feedback problems and with advancements in technology there’s almost no delay in sound and I’ve only had a crash once when I forgot a power supply and ran on 20% battery for an hour show, dropout was battery dying… to add to that I not only run my instruments (all 7 of them) through my laptop, but 3x vocals, violin, cymbalom, drumkit, bass guitar too… no latency, no dropouts… future is here, embrace… totally worth it!

my 2c

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