PiezoZoid-Bu is a compact battery-powered buffer for passive piezo pickups.
By giving the pickup the right electrical load, it preserves more of the instrument’s low end and body and reduces the thin, nasal character often associated with passive piezo systems.
The result is a fuller, warmer and more natural sound — with no EQ and no tone shaping.
Passive piezo pickups are highly sensitive to the impedance of whatever they are connected to. Long cables and unsuitable inputs can change their response before the signal even reaches your amplifier or preamp.
PiezoZoid-Bu is designed to solve that problem at the source.
The input stage uses a JFET buffer with very high input impedance, allowing the piezo pickup to operate under a much more suitable load. The buffered output can then drive normal instrument cables and downstream equipment without the same sensitivity to cable capacitance and input impedance.
The circuit runs internally at 18 V, providing generous headroom for the strong transient peaks that piezo pickups can produce. The result is a clean signal path with a wide dynamic range and no unwanted clipping under normal playing conditions.
PiezoZoid-Bu is completely self-powered from its internal rechargeable battery, so no external power supply is required during use.
There are no controls to set and no EQ to adjust. It is intended to do one job only: buffer the piezo signal correctly before it enters the rest of the audio chain.
Suitable for passive piezo pickups used with:
Features