View post (acoustic pickup)

View thread

iamthe_eggman
Grizzled Spellchecker
Joined: 05/09/00
Posts: 2,233
iamthe_eggman
Grizzled Spellchecker
Joined: 05/09/00
Posts: 2,233
09/30/2003 2:45 pm
Check out Fishman Rare Earth pickups. The pickup is a slim piece of metal that fits under your saddle, and the jack replaces your strap button, which means that your acoustic will look almost exactly the same as before (except for a new shiny metal strap button). Jon Broderick wrote up a little review on it a (long) while back, if I remember correctly. Also, I believe that the pickup has a gain control on the input jack.

Fishman also makes a pickup that has a plastic control box which gets fitted into your guitar (scary!!!!). I wouldn't be comfortable with sawing a rectangular hole into the side of my guitar, but some people like the convenience of having the controls right there and the battery is much easier to replace that way.

If you need just a quick fix and aren't a total tone freak, there are some decent soundhole pickups out there (e.g. Seymour Duncan). The problem with this is that the cable runs outside the body and rubs up against it. The plus, though, is that the pickup helps fight feedback.

Sorry, no reviews, all I've done is a lot of research in my quest to find a good acoustic pickup. After a while, I finally decided that, when it's time, I'll get a separate guitar with a mike/pickup in it (e.g. Takamine, Yamaha, Simon & Patrick). The guitar would cost less than putting a full-blown Fishman pickup in my trusty Yamaha FG412S, which BTW, is 7 years old and sounds better with each passing day...
... and that's all I have to say about that.

[U]ALL[/U] generalizations are [U]WRONG[/U]

[/sarcasm]