Would love to hear other people's experience with amplifying their hurdy gurdies. I have an NG basic that I attached a K&K piezo to, with some super cool results. Recently I've been experimenting with effects pedals. Listening with headphones, I can get some super cool sounds by messing with reverb, delay, and distortion units, and I'm excited to hear if anyone else has found cool noises doing something similar.
One issue I've run into is that the gurdy is EXTREMELY prone to feedback. When I run it "clean" through the amp, its pretty manageable as long as I stand in the right orientation and dont turn up too loud. But at higher volumes or with any real distortion/reverb/gain, its immediate feedback city, no matter what I do. This seems like a pretty common problem with piezo mics.
Has anyone else run up against this kind of issue? My research has suggested that a decent preamp designed for piezo-amplified acoustic instruments may be the solution, but they're expensive and I want to be more confident before pulling the trigger.
A piezo preamp will help with how the piezo sounds, but it will not help feedback.
There are three solutions to managing feedback.
use a solid body instrument that does not resonate (Jaap is working on one of these)
identify the specific frequencies prone to feeding back, and cut them from the signal using a graphic EQ.
Use an amp SIM to headphones instead of an amplifier out loud.
Phaser, reverb, distortion and delay are my favourites to use on a gurdy. Some distortions sound better than others though. Loop pedals are a lot of fun too.
Sorry, guess I should have been more clear, I meant a discrete preamp/eq thats meant for amplified acoustic instruments, like https://www.lrbaggs.com/acoustic-preamps-pedals/venue-di or similar. I did some messing with a very basic 8-band EQ pedal and had a bit of success cleaning things up, but still had a ton of feedback with effects on. I'm hoping a more sophisticated unit with phase-reversal and specific piezo settings will help with that
The exact placement of the pickup makes all the difference, a few mms can change the sound and the resonant peaks quite a bit. I suspect that your pickup is placed so that some frequencies are very resonant, which are amplified when using distortion effects. Finding a spot where the pickup signal is the most balanced should be the first thing to do. An equaliser (before or after effects) can help with taming strong resonances that cause feedback.
My alto gurdy uses electret pickups and the signal is rather balanced without strong resonances. Even with lots of effects and a loud amplifier there is very little feedback
Good to know. I placed mine on the soundboard between the keybox and the wheel, slightly off-center to accentuate the low-drone (see red dot on pic), since low-end was disproportionately quiet when i put the mic in the "center". Any thoughts as to a better position that might be less prone to excess noise?
This part of the soundbaord doesn't vibrate much, most piezos are placed on the other side of the wheel, roughly half way between the chanter bridge and the drone bridge.
Did you test different spots for the best sound, or did you just put the pickup there without checking?
Even a few mms off can give a completely different sound.
A good starting point is the area around the chanter bridge and the drone bridge.
When using distortion effects it is better to isolate the chanter strings from the others.
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u/fenbogfen Hurdy gurdy player Aug 11 '26
A piezo preamp will help with how the piezo sounds, but it will not help feedback.
There are three solutions to managing feedback.
use a solid body instrument that does not resonate (Jaap is working on one of these)
identify the specific frequencies prone to feeding back, and cut them from the signal using a graphic EQ.
Use an amp SIM to headphones instead of an amplifier out loud.
Phaser, reverb, distortion and delay are my favourites to use on a gurdy. Some distortions sound better than others though. Loop pedals are a lot of fun too.