What I was planning was to adhere the cortado to the end of the paddle, and then have the rest of the paddle just held down against the instrument’s face by the floating bridge. There wouldn’t be any soundhole interaction; it would all be pickup directly from the bridge and face of instrument. This lets the paddle run the full length of the bridge (underneath it) rather than requiring the very wide (and fairly long) board which would be needed to allow the cortado to reach over the sound hole.
This will also hopefully give me some useful data I can apply later on the boundary mic project. I want to be able to use these microphones outside, so I’m going to have a largeish resonating plate to which I will have attached 1-2 piezo discs (which I already have), which will be separated from a backplate and side-protective rim, possibly (particularly at first) just by paper tape. This will make the whole resonating plate into (effectively) a large microphone diaphragm, with the backplate used basically as a backside deflector, preventing pickup from that direction – or so I hope, anyway. 😀 Plus it’ll provide attachment points to hang the device, a place to attach the box containing the amplification circuit, etc.
Anyway, if this works well, I’ll at least consider rosewood for that resonating plate. If it’s weak in the high end (strikes me as unlikely) then I’ll consider a lighter material, and so on.