Acoustic guitar pickup woes and advice ...

ICBM

Just buy the PRS Hollowbody with piezo and be done with it .

It's still there, and still the same price...

thomasross20

thomasross20

Eh, my post never "posted"?

Summary: I'm trying to minimise gear and maximise play time (my suhr is back in the ads).

How are you? The band?
Should meet up some point (Edinburgh meet, folks?). Great weather right now

4114Effects

@thomasross20 just an update ... I emailed the very helpful guys at LR Baggs who were quick to reply and talked me through fault finding the pickup install. Turns out the installer had forgotten to add one clip - which anchors the element UST next to the bridge entry hole.

They sent some clips over, took me 10 mins to clilp the cable down and now it sounds lovely. Most natural acoustic amplified sound I've ever had.

thomasross20

Wow, so such a small thing made a huge difference!! 

I'm still undecided as to what system to go for. What others did you try? 

Do you still have feedback problems? 

thomasross20

The more I look into this, it boils down to these:

1) M1 or M80. 

I'd only use a passive soundhole pup as I think they sound better. Plus no battery worries. 

--> Some sort of DI box is a must. 

--> Not sure if the DI / EQ control should be integrated onto the guitar (under the sound hole?) or as a separate box... and if it shuold be XLR or just regular cable...

2) Baggs Anthem

This is meant to sound great, better than the Lyric. Still... it's a mic. And I've heard it can fall off if not attached properly. 

3) K&K Pure Mini.

Passive and non-invasive (invisible unlike sound hole pup). Though you do have to SUPERGLUE the contacts in !! 

Supposed to be a bit bassy so you need to EQ it. Apparently it's more feedback prone in loud settings than a sound-hole pup. 

Tempted to get 1 & 3 and do a blend! 

As for DI... I'd probably go for K&K if I got the Pure Mini... or Para DI or Red Eye if I got a Baggs system. 

ICBM

thomasross20 said:

Tempted to get 1 & 3 and do a blend!

A blend will only work with a stereo cable and an outboard mixer, if you don't want to put the whole system in the guitar - you can't combine a magnetic and a piezo otherwise, their impedances are too different.

It does sound really good though - for a while I had a Taylor with a Fishman piezo system (pre-Expression) that I added a Rare Earth pickup to, mainly for using effects including distortion, but the plain clean mixed sound was much better than either pickup alone too.

thomasross20

No sound clips I'm assuming.. ? 

Totting up the cost of all this... it's like £250-500. I need to be sure I'm going to play this thing live first.

ICBM

In that case by far the best idea is just getting a second hand soundhole pickup. Much cheaper, and doesn't need to be fitted permanently if you don't want to.

I think I have a recording of the Taylor somewhere, I'll have a look.

thomasross20

Thanks!
Maybe a Seymour Duncan Woody or similar to start off with..

ICBM

thomasross20 said:

Maybe a Seymour Duncan Woody

Don't bother. You're paying for the name and they're really not very good… I've had a couple of them, the plain single coil and the posh humbucking one with adjustable polepieces - both were quite low in output, poor signal-to-noise ratio and not very good string balance. They do look nice though .

The cheap Artec ones or similar are at least as good and cost less.

4114Effects

I'll echo that. Buying a woody would just put you off soundhole pickups full stop.

I was digging around my parts box this weekend and found a Shadow SH141 active soundhole pickup. Pretty decent sounding I seem to remember. Might shove it up for sale as it won't fit my travel guitar.

thomasross20

OK, no woody for me lol..

SRich

I've had a Woody for ages...........

........ok ok. I bought one off've the Bay a few years back and couldn't get the thing to work to any discernible output.

ICBM

SRich said:

I've had a Woody for ages...........

........ok ok. I bought one off've the Bay a few years back and couldn't get the thing to work to any discernible output.

You do know they don't work on classical guitars, right?

Yes, I really have had two or three customers bring 'faulty' pickups back for that exact problem over the years…

The Woody seems to be very height-sensitive, which doesn't help when it doesn't really have any proper way of adjusting that. It's crap, basically.

thomasross20

Tried a whole bunch of pickup systems today: 

Baggs i-beam: didn't like this. Sounded not so good.

Baggs element: better....

Baggs M1: better still....

Baggs Anthem: woah baby, very cool how you can control the blend, so if you're doing a small gig you can select full-on mic else you can choose the other option (pieze? I forget...)

Fishman Matrix was recommended to me at one store. 

I checked out that PRS Hollowbody II - very cool!

 

The best sounding was the ES2 system in a Taylor 814 I played. Seriously good. 

However you can't buy those. 

Completely put off sound-hole pickups - too big and obtrusive, I don't care how feedback resistant they are. 

Looks like the Anthem is top of the pops... it's what Lowden put in their guitars, apparently? 

I also tried Lowdens, Bourgeois, Martins, Taylors, a lot of high end guitars but none could beat my Larrivee. 

Tried Larrivee parlour guitars which were great but 12-fret acoustics aren't for me. 

Much prefer mahogany to rosewood for acoustics, I think. 

Still tempted by K&K Pure Mini, and there's the Fishman recommendation (same as ICBM say) to check out. But I like the idea of the Anthem... stay tuned...

Also, I'm not keen on strap buttons. Think I'd play sitting down.

4114Effects

Now I have my anthem set up right it's the best system I've ever used. I blend to 90% mic and 10% piezo. Massively better than any piezo or magnetic and no unsightly black plastic box on the side of the guitar.

Just sounds like my guitar but louder. None of that artificial piezo zing and weird mid spikes.

4114Effects

Might be worth looking at the Lyric too, which is just the mic element of the anthem without the piezo. Much simpler to install.

thomasross20

Think I'd rather have the Anthem with the blend option. 

Still..... how feedback resistant is it? 

I'm still tempted by the K&K Pure Mini. So simple, unobtrusive etc... have you tried that? 

thomasross20

I just saw the price of the Anthem. Close to £500 for the full-blown thing? 

Jesus...!!

Seriously tempted to just go for the K&K Mini (£85) and get a DI ...

Though apparently the Anthem is just as, if not more, feedback resistant than the K&K. I note there are different versions of the Anthem, too.