Since I’m still trying to get a decent sounding electric washboard I’ve modified mine 3 times this last year.
The first modifications was replacing the round piezo by a rod piezo designed for string instruments.
The second was to remove the round piezo I had placed on the wood which never has been that much use and dig a deeper slot for the rod piezo. (No pictures sorry.)
Both were an improvement to the sound but neither made me feel completely satisfied either. IMO for amplification a mic in front of the board still sounds much better.
However:
Many thanks to Shane Speal for posting this video!
When I noticed the above video earlier this month I immediately figured it was worth trying. In fact I was a bit annoyed that I hadn’t thought of it myself since I know that in a cigar box guitar – for instance, – you don’t actually need to place the guitar pickup underneath the strings. It can be placed beneath a metal plate that is attached to the sound board.
So last week I replaced the rod piezo with a old humbucking pickup I had lying around. It was easy to do and first impressions are positive; a lot more of the metal’s rattle and resonance. And reducing feedback can be truly useful; in some stage situations a piezo amplified washboard can start to feedback extremely easily.
Now it must be said that as much as I like the idea of an electric washboard, I rarely end up using mine. The whole guitar hero effect box thing ends up to not really be for me but if it’s yours: go for it!!
I’ll add that two major issues I have with them are the fact that the sound of your thimbles hitting metal is not really amplified by any of the systems I’ve tried – so the amplified sound is a lot “chunkier”. And the fact that around here at least, most sound engineers don’t have the faintest idea what to do with a washboard in the mix and it’s already bad enough with a mic..
Updated July 2018 to add:
So although it was a lot of fun to experiment with, for the moment I’ve given up on the idea of having an electric washboard, and recently removed it all. At the moment I’m experimenting with placing a mini condenser microphone, in this case a Micro-HP from Audix, just above the board.
Hope to post something about that soon.