The effect of varying amounts of excess Bi on the structural and electrical properties of sintered 0.363BiScO(3)-0.637PbTiO(3) (BSPT) ceramics was studied in detail in order to evaluate its role in the fabrication of BSPT ceramics by conventional ceramic processing. The results show that pre-addition of 0.2 wt% excess Bi2O3 can not only well compensate the Bi evaporation loss, but also act as sintering aid, leading to highly dense ceramics with desired phase structure, stoichiometry, and thus substantially enhanced electrical properties, with the piezoelectric coefficient d(33), electromechanical coupling factor k(p), dielectric constant epsilon(T)(33)/epsilon(0) and remnant polarization P-r being improved by 23.4%, 10.8%, 17% and 22.2%, respectively. The work demonstrates that pre-addition of a proper amount of excess Bi is a simple but effective solution toward a controllable and reproducible conventional processing for high-temperature BSPT piezoceramics with superior electrical properties. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.