Quote Originally Posted by Simon Barden View Post
It doesn't need to be a bass pickup. There's nothing inherently different between a guitar and a bass pickup except the number of coils and the coil spacing. Same magnets, same typical 42AWG wire. So a guitar pickup will pick up just as much bass end. Just use whatever's handy/spare/cheapest. Single coils will probably be better as they have less mid-range emphasis.

No need for a preamp or high impedance input then.

Most piezo-style kick blocks I believe are pretty solid as you really just want the 'thump' of the wood as your foot hits it. But a pickup style unit will need a thinnish top that can resonate - at least a bit. You don't want a long sustain and you don't want it so resonant that you get acoustic feedback when you apply a bit of volume.
Interesting. I do have a few spare pickups around. And I have an LM386 headphone amp that I built a few years ago that could maybe drive a speaker or the headphone input on my amp, at least for experimenting. And I found some piezo transducers for under $10 on eBay, so experiments seem likely.

Given my lack of a bass amp, I have a new idea. Make the wooden box large enough to house a small 386-based amp (like a noisy cricket or something modded for bass) and a speaker. A self-contained stomp box sub-woofer thingy.