Music Man JPX sounds distorted with Axe Fx II

M

Mykin

Member
Might be a dumb question, by does anyone know why my Music Man JPX would sound distorted when I play through the piezo pickup?
 
Could you elaborate. What input is the piezo going into. What is your signal path in the axe-fx?
 
Unfortunately I'm a total Axe newb so i apologize if I'm missing something obvious...

The piezo is plugged into the front Instrument input. I've tried trimming the input from 0% and still hear very noticeable distortion when playing through the piezo vs the regular pickups. I am testing with clean patches and the regular pickups sound super clean. When I play through my combo amp, the piezo is fine too.

Do you need to do something special with Axe when playing a piezo?
 
Check the battery in your JPX. When it gets low, the whole guitar will sound like crap if you're using the blended output.
 
the piezo signal is very hot compared to the magnetic output on the guitar. with my jp guitars, my axe ii input gain for the mag pickups is about 30. i tried the piezo through the front though and i didn't experience any distortion.

can you try the piezo through anything else to see if it also distorts there?
 
chrisallen8888 said:
the piezo signal is very hot compared to the magnetic output on the guitar. with my jp guitars, my axe ii input gain for the mag pickups is about 30. i tried the piezo through the front though and i didn't experience any distortion.

can you try the piezo through anything else to see if it also distorts there?
Click to expand...

I disagree. If the piezo is hotter than the magnetic pickups, you have the volume, bass, and treble controls on the back of the guitar turned up too far. Try setting them to center detent for everything, then giving the treble a slight boost. Should be VERY close to the same as the DiMarzios.
 
when you use 2 separate cables, you lose the function of the "mix" control on the the piezo controls, and it seems that the volume of the piezo is the same as with the mix control turned all the way up.
 
chrisallen8888 said:
when you use 2 separate cables, you lose the function of the "mix" control on the the piezo controls, and it seems that the volume of the piezo is the same as with the mix control turned all the way up.
Click to expand...

True, but the bass an treble controls will still boost those frequencies.
 
When I play the same patches through the magnetic pickups it sounds very clean. The piezo however is really hot. I am using a single cable on the mix channel from the guitar but have only the piezo selected.

It looks like I can adjust the input in the amp block of each patch but I was wondering if there was something global that I can do.

And it's not the battery because the same guitar sounds great through my acoustic and combo amp.
 
with magnetic pickups, we know the volume knob is more like a "gain" control, i.e. cleaning up a distorted sound by rolling the volume back. the piezo volume on the jp guitar acts more like a "volume" control than a "gain" control, assuming you're not running it into distortion. so i'd suggest just turning the piezo volume down a bit. i usually run my piezo volume at 7-8 (out of 10) for rhythm, but have a bit of room to turn up for a solo if necessary.
 
Chris suggestion should work but did you try adjusting the Mix control on the back of the guitar?
 
As rickboot says^^.

check the mix control, check the battery, check the cable.

when i play my jp6->piezo->road king, it sounds great.
when i play it with the exact same setting through my mark v, it's too hot. adjusting the mix control fixes this.
 
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