There are DI's specifically designed to work with Piezo pickups. Radial makes one. (
https://www.radialeng.com/product/pz-di).
You may find that the current DI your using is simply not optimized for your particular Guitar/Pickup combination.
The variable impedance control on the PZ-DI will affect the tone you get from the Piezo pickup which could help you get a more pleasing starting point. However you can still do the following procedure with the DI you have.
You might also try plugging the guitar directly into the guitar input on the Tube Opto.
As for gain, the Tube Opto only has 60db of gain which is not huge so keep in mind there is +20db of additional gain available at the top of the SAC input channel. Don't be afraid to use it.
The next issue is going to be specific to the guitar. It is after all an acoustic box with very specific resonant frequencies. The tone you get from the pickup is going to be affected by the location of the pickup on the guitar. Since you can't move the pickup because its fix-mounted at the bridge, your going to have to deal with whatever resonant frequencies are inherently boosted by the guitar body at that location.
If you wanted a direct way to see/measure those resonant frequencies you could mount a speaker on the guitar body, pump some white noise through it and look at the waveform you get back through the pickup.
That option is probably more complicated though, so the fastest way to do this manually is with controlled feedback.
Put a levelizer on the output of your system. Configure it as a brick-wall limiter so you can control how loud the system will get.
Turn up the gain on the channel until you start to get feedback and back off a tiny amount so you're just under the feedback threshold.
Turn on the channel EQ. Select any band, they are all adjustable across the entire frequency range. Set the Q/bandwidth to its narrowest setting. set the gain to Max, and then slowly sweep the frequency while you strum the guitar until you find the 1st resonant peak of the guitar. It will stand out like a sore thumb as you sweep past it.
Once you find the offending peak, set the Q to around 1 octave (or maybe a little less) and adjust the gain to -6 or so, to even out the resonance.
There will likely be 2-3 primary peaks so you will have to repeat this process using a 2nd/3rd band on the EQ. (just start your sweep from above where the previous peak was found).
This whole process can be done pretty quickly and should get rid of the "Honk" your talking about.
There are DI's specifically designed to work with Piezo pickups. Radial makes one. ([url]https://www.radialeng.com/product/pz-di[/url]).
You may find that the current DI your using is simply not optimized for your particular Guitar/Pickup combination.
The variable impedance control on the PZ-DI will affect the tone you get from the Piezo pickup which could help you get a more pleasing starting point. However you can still do the following procedure with the DI you have.
You might also try plugging the guitar directly into the guitar input on the Tube Opto.
As for gain, the Tube Opto only has 60db of gain which is not huge so keep in mind there is +20db of additional gain available at the top of the SAC input channel. Don't be afraid to use it.
The next issue is going to be specific to the guitar. It is after all an acoustic box with very specific resonant frequencies. The tone you get from the pickup is going to be affected by the location of the pickup on the guitar. Since you can't move the pickup because its fix-mounted at the bridge, your going to have to deal with whatever resonant frequencies are inherently boosted by the guitar body at that location.
If you wanted a direct way to see/measure those resonant frequencies you could mount a speaker on the guitar body, pump some white noise through it and look at the waveform you get back through the pickup.
That option is probably more complicated though, so the fastest way to do this manually is with controlled feedback.
Put a levelizer on the output of your system. Configure it as a brick-wall limiter so you can control how loud the system will get.
Turn up the gain on the channel until you start to get feedback and back off a tiny amount so you're just under the feedback threshold.
Turn on the channel EQ. Select any band, they are all adjustable across the entire frequency range. Set the Q/bandwidth to its narrowest setting. set the gain to Max, and then slowly sweep the frequency while you strum the guitar until you find the 1st resonant peak of the guitar. It will stand out like a sore thumb as you sweep past it.
Once you find the offending peak, set the Q to around 1 octave (or maybe a little less) and adjust the gain to -6 or so, to even out the resonance.
There will likely be 2-3 primary peaks so you will have to repeat this process using a 2nd/3rd band on the EQ. (just start your sweep from above where the previous peak was found).
This whole process can be done pretty quickly and should get rid of the "Honk" your talking about.
