Installation Guide for JourneyTek® Passive piezo pickups.
Here’s a great video overview and a downloadable PDF document for guidance on how to install our passive piezo pickups. The video demonstrates installation for EP001K – our passive steelstring pickup with German-made piezos. The process is similar for EP002K, EP003K, and EP004K.
CLICK HERE FOR A COMPANION PDF MANUAL
Note For Ukulele Piezo Positioning: Most ukuleles have three fan braces as shown in the image below.
Position the two piezo elements of the EP003 pickup on either side of the center brace. Because of the size of most ukulele sound holes and the relative distance to the bridge plate, it is sometimes difficult to position the piezos on the bridge plate at the position (1). Alternatively you can position them in location (2). The attachment process is identical to that shown in the above video, with the exception that you will not be using a jig, but will rather hold the piezo in place with your finger until the glue dries.
If you want to position directly under the saddle, or if you’re working with a pinless bridge, you can search on YouTube for “under bridge pickup instal on pinless bridge” and one of the top results show how you can drill into the saddle slot to use a jig for positioning the piezos on a pinless bridge.
Installation Guide for JourneyTek® EPS001 Dual Source Module
Notes for EPS001 Installation:
- Our very first version of the EPS001 had a design flaw in which the output cable and jack from the preamp module was mono, but should have been stereo. There were only a handful of these first versions, so it’s unlikely that your unit has this issue. To check, you can look at the wire that goes from the preamp “Out” socket to the guitar cable socket. This wire should be a stereo wire as shown as wire “A” (which features two black bands on the male connectors) in the picture below. If your wire has only one black band on the male connectors as shown in wire “B” then you need to replace this cable along with the guitar cable jack connector shown below. You must have a new guitar cable jack along with this internal cable. Simply reach out to us on our contact form and request for the cable and connector and provide us with your address and phone info, and we’ll send the replacements at no charge.
- If you have an earlier Journey Instruments guitar you’re looking to upgrade, you may need to replace the passive pickups in your instrument.
To evaluate if your guitar’s pickup is the newest upgradeable version, you’ll need to get a mirror and a phone or flashlight to look into the sound hole. Position the mirror so that with the use of a flashlight or phone, you can clearly see the pickup connector on the inside of the guitar. You can even try to just use a cell phone by using the movie function with the light – if the focus is good enough, this will work as well.
The newer upgradeable pickups will have a socket with a 2mm connector that you can remove from the back of the pickup jack. This connector can be removed and re-routed to the active pickup module for upgrade. The picture below shows these as type A (which have no sleeve), and type B (which have a sleeve); both of these can be unplugged and upgraded.
The older non-upgradeable connectors (depicted below as type C) have heat-shrink tube where the connector jack and the 3 wires going to the under-saddle piezos connect. This pickup can’t be upgraded because the wires are soldered directly to the pickup connector
- If you’re upgrading to the EPS001-05K or EPS001-15K from the original EP001K, you must be sure to use the new socket provided with the EPS001-05K or EPS001-15K kit. It should look like B in the chart above. If you have an older pickup jack and try to route the “out” to this jack, it will have no signal.