Acoustic Pickup in a Gretsch 6120?

tele69

Hi lads n lasses. Has anybody fitted an acoustic pickup in a Gretsch hollow body guitar? I'm thinking of it but not sure if I'm wasting my time. I like the idea of a blend option like the Pete Townshend Strat. The thought process is designed to avoid swapping guitars live . Sincerest thanks for reading. Gaz

guitars4you

Never tried it so hard to pass judgement on that idea - But what about the Boss AC3 simulator - I know it does not nail an acoustic tone down to the nth degree, but then again, neither does the Fishman system that players like PT use

Are you still on about running the acoustic pick-up through your guitar amp, or a PA/acoustic amp that is more 'natural sounding' with wider frequencies and tonal response

Winny_Pooh

There is that fishman model that sits in the wooden bridge base, might be pretty interesting.

paganskins

There are some examples of the K&K Definity pickup in a semi, laminate jazz box and a carved jazz box here. I have one on my Hofner New President. It sounds good but does pick up handling noise.

If you search online there's plenty of anecdotal reports of twin spot type K&K pickups used in the way you suggest, glued to the top just inside the f holes.

If you've got a bigsby I expect any 'acoustic' pickup would pick up creaks and string noise if you used it.

A tuneomatic style piezo bridge could work.

Another option and a bit of a plug as I have one surplus would be the schatten archtop pickup, it's too tall for the guitar I was going to use it on but might work for you. Like this, I picked it up off eBay for £50 and happy to move it on for the same if you're interested.

paganskins

p.s. I can see where you coming from, laminate hollow bodies though not very loud can have a pleasant unplugged tone.

ICBM

Definitely don't put a piezo bridge on it if it has a Bigsby - you'll get horrible creaking and grinding noises through the amp if you use them together.

You may be surprised how acoustic it sounds if you just DI the neck pickup - not even with an acoustic simulator pedal - essentially it isn't a million miles from a magnetic soundhole pickup on an acoustic guitar, and with the right EQ it will sound pretty good, even if not exactly like an acoustic guitar. I've used my Rickenbacker 381 very successfully like that - with the advantage that it has stereo outputs so I could run the neck pickup straight to the PA and the bridge either into an amp or via an amp-simulator pedal into the PA… with both on at the same time it almost sounded like two guitars double-tracked.

If that isn't close enough I'd definitely try an acoustic simulator pedal before a piezo pickup.

tele69

Sincerest thanks for some useful replies there guys. I'm not terribly keen to change appearance of the guitar. It doea have a Bigsbybut wouldn't use that in 'acoustic mode'. I was considering running  something out of the strap pin (bigsby end).

A few interesting things to consider there people. I do appreciate the input very much.

ICBM

tele69 said:

I was considering running  something out of the strap pin (bigsby end).

You won't be able to easily fit an endpin jack through the Bigsby. It can be done, but needs a bit more engineering than normal. You're probably better to use a stereo jack in place of the normal one, and a splitter cable/box to separate the outputs.

Fishman make a preamp/jack unit which can automatically sense whether a mono or stereo cable is being used, and route the two signals accordingly - it needs its own volume control (which is also how the unit is mounted), but you could replace one of the standard controls with it if you do a bit of rewiring on the magnetic side. If you're using one of those you will also need a means of fitting a battery inside the guitar.

paganskins

A cheap removable contact pickup aka bug might be cheap and reversible as a starting point