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Baritone guitar pickup
Hi everyone,
I have just acquired a luthier made Baritone guitar with european spruce top and maple back and sides, and it sounds wonderful acoustically. However, it is fitted with an LR Baggs iBeam active pickup, and plugged into either my AER Compact 60 or Ultrasound amp the sound is fairly poor. Now I'm wondering if the pickup is incorrectly installed, or is it an unsuitable pickup for a baritone guitar. I have other guitars fitted with K&K pickups which I like the sound of, but these are normal guitars with smallish bodies. Any advice appreciated, Malcolm |
#2
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baritone pickup
Hopefully, someone else will answer who has experience with your pickup. I have only one guitar with a pickup, and that's my baritone. I have a K&K and am satisfied with it. It sounds very good to me, is definitely louder, and there is no fuss or trauma associated with installing or using it.
My reasoning on getting it was that with the bari being lower voiced, it will appear to be quiet relative to whatever else is being played with it and will seem quieter to the audience's ears. I've not seen any reason since to change my thoughts about this.
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#3
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Thank you, if I can't get better quality out of the Baggs, I will definitely fit a K&K at some stage.
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#4
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I had a LR Baggs I Beam active in an old Guild D40. Muddy sounding at best. I would recommend a LR Baggs Lyric bridge plate mic. It's an easy install as the endpin is already drilled. Fairly quick from any good guitar tech or DYI if you're so inclined? Best of luck!
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#5
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Quote:
-Mike
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For sale: Mint Condition Guild D125-12 All Mahogany 12 string 2009 Martin 000-18 Golden Era 1937 |
#6
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Malcolm, I've owned a high quality McAlister acoustic baritone guitar since 1999. Getting the right pickup for it proved to be fairly challenging.
Roy installed a Highlander pickup in it when he built it, but I went through a succession of different pickup, pickup & mic, and other combinations until I finally hit on what worked best. I think I went through four different pickups before I got what's in there now. Which is a K&K Pure Mini bridgeplate pickup with a K&K undersaddle transducer going to a K&K external blender preamp. It goes out as a stereo signal, and I blend it at the preamp. How much I use from each pickup will depend on the room, but the general ratio I always start with is about 70% bridgeplate and 30% undersaddle. (Some room acoustics work better with an 80/20 ratio.) What I found was that using the bridgeplate pickups alone tended to make the instrument sound too tubby, and that it needs a little bit of upper frequency bite from the undersaddle pickup. Your baritone might well act a little differently, but having the sound coming from two sources rather than just one helps get the complexity of the baritone's sound across more accurately. I would advise against using an internal microphone on a baritone, though - that along with an undersaddle pickup was the WORST combination I tried. An enormous amount of howling feedback that nothing seemed to be able to tame, let's just leave it at that. Actually, it was easily tamed by simply turning the internal microphone off completely. But that wasn't what I wanted.... Anyway, look into the K&K bridgeplate/undersaddle combination. Not only is it the best-sounding solution I found, it was also the least expensive. I've had it in the instrument for five or six years now, and it's still chugging right along. Hope this helps. Wade Hampton Miller |
#7
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Thanks Wade,
I'll try that combination if I can. As previously mentioned, I do like and use K&K pickups in other guitars. I have a Baggs M1 lying around somewhere, I thought I might try that as well. I agree two sources blended should give more control. |