There are 3 terminals, which means you don't have a mono jack. You have a stereo or
TRS connector (Tip, Ring, Sleave).
The big terminal (sleeve) is the ground/shield. The other two are the tip & ring. If you are going to plug-in a mono (TS) plug, you can wire the signal to the tip, and leave the sleeve unconnected.
Since you can't see inside the connector, you may need to plug-in a mating plug and use an ohmmeter (or continuity tester) to find out which solder-pin is the tip. (I would
guess the longer one is the tip...)
Quote:
.. am i good to just attach the piezo direct to the jack socket? a few things i see online involve having the piezo amped with a tiny mono amp before going to the jack. do i have to do this, or will i just be able to turn up the input when it gets to my soundcard? and what are the chances of damaging the pre-amp on my soundcard (UA-101 if that makes a difference to ya)?
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There's very little chance of damaging your soundcard or preamp. If your signal is too high, you'll get distortion but you should not do any damage.
I know a tiny bit about piezos... I don't know if you can drive the soundcard directly... Piezos are capable of putting-out relatively high voltage into a very-high impedance.
But, it depends on how much the piezo device is being actuated/moved. And, a soundcard load of ~10k might be low-enough impedance to "drag down" the signal. A microphone preamp will have lower impedance, which will drag-down the signal further, but it will also have higher gain.
I believe a piezo is also a capacitive source, which means that with a (relatively) low impedance load, you might get a signal that's high-frequencies only and no bass.
So my guess is, a peizo pickup works best into a special preamp with an impedance of 1M ohm or more. You can build a high-Z preamp with an op-amp, or a FET op-amp (or a FET or vacuum tube). You shouldn't need much voltage gain, but you need a low impedance output. (i.e. You need current gain... But, you don't generally design for, or calculate, current gain... You just need enough voltage/signal, and
any op-amp has enough output current (and low-enough output impedance) to drive any power amp or soundcard...)
FYI - There is a company called
PAiA that has been selling a spring reverb kit for many-many years. They used to sell the spring reverb tanks separately, but it looks like they are now only sold along with the kit. It's not cheap but good spring-reverb tanks are not easy to find. (It's easier to find a spring reverb simulator VST plug-in.
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