acoustic impedance question

bogwalrus

I have a piezo mic. I am using it to make my own musical instrument. I'm trying to figure out the best material to use to attach the piezo mic to as it works on sound vibrations which i'm finding quite hard to figure out.


The end goal is to connect the mic to a kind of brace that has strings attached. When i play the strings i want the full quality of the strings to be picked up by the piezo mic. My thoughts were to use a simple nickle brace/clamp to hold down a few strings so they are tought at one end and loose at the other then have the piezo mic attached to this brace but i'm not sure if nickle is the best metal to use or should i even use metal?

From my experimenting it seems the strings resonate better when there is a metal brace/clamp but not with other materials like wood etc.

bogwalrus

then again when you attach the mic to a wooden box it pics up all the little touches and scrapes so wood must have a low acoustic impedance?

Parsley

given that most stringed instruments i'm aware of are made almost invariably made from wood, i'd say that's your best bet.

Parsley

actually there are plenty of guitars that use piezo mics/pickups so you could check out how they're generally mounted or whatever...