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#31
06-06-2016, 04:02 AM
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A little pickup rant to break up the boredom
 I stopped posting about pickups a while back but I'm in the mood so here I go...I have tried, in many of my guitar, most of the pickups listened here except the Trance and the Dazzo, although I did try a factory installed Trance system that was in a signature Jackson Brown Gibson J45. I felt it was inferior to the electro/acoustic tone of my custom shop 50's reissue J45 reissue (with B-B XOM 2.2 system), although the Jackson Brown J45 sounded a bit better acoustically than my 50's reissue did (a little better clarity in the low mids). My BBand loaded J45 was to me much easier to drive at louder volumes and had a fuller tone to what I heard from the Trance loaded J45. My comparison was done on a Bose L2 system and my Scherlter Jam 400! And to be fair to Jackson Brown, he plays his guitar live with a mic in front of it to fill out the tone! And the quote about the Trance having to be installed by a qualified tech, I'm sure the Gibson custom shop knows how to install a trance system! The quote about why put a cheap pickup in an expensive guitar to me wreaks of cork sniffing hyperbole dreamed up by some crazy boutique acousitic guitar repair shop. More true is that guitar pickups are generally priced according to what the marketing people figure someone will pay for them. Baggs M1 & M80 - decent sounding in low volume non aggresive playing situations but kind of plastic sounding in loud venues, but worse yet, they click when you hit them with a pickup. M80 more subject to feedback then the M1. That's what you get when your magnetic pickup can sense body vibrations, and it's getting those wonderful sounds from the guitar top sweeetspot, the front of the soundhole! If you really like the tone of the M1, try the passive Dimarzio Angel with an outboard pre/eq, it's devoid of the click, and is pretty good sounding when EQ'd. If I have to use a magnetic, I use in this order order of preference.... Seymour Duncan Mag mic (currently gigging with this in my Martin OM-15 Glosstop). With it's adjustable poles and side mic, I found I could dial a decent tone from this pickup in a variety of guitars, AND, I learned a tip on this forum about setting the EQ for the Mag-mic. Set the EQ while dialed mostly on the mic side, then roll back the dial to a little more of the magnetic, and voila, nice tone, and pretty good at not feeding back, ****, it was the first tip about pickups that I read here that worked, for me, anyway!!! Dimarzio Anggel (as I said before a nice sounding M1 type pickup) , Fishman Rare Earth (installed in my Martin 00015S, and my 00016TR dual sourced with an Fishman Infinity Matrix) decent sounding. None of these pickups are earth shattering acoustically accurate good but they all are very solid sounding. Baggs Anthem and Lyric, compression system has strange midrange frequencies that are very hard to EQ out. And the variants of the Anthem systems seem to damp the acoustic tone badly. Also their round Element UST, which are supplied with Gibsons like the J15 and J35 are notorious for balance problems, along with the round UST D-Tar systems (which weren't listed in this thread). If I have to use a UST... my favorite is the Dual Source B-Band XOM 2.2 (this one sounds great in my Martin D17M, Gibson 50's reissue J45, Gibson J-100 extra, and a mid 70's Gibson Gospel), and also the Fishman Infinity Matrix (installed in my Martin D28 where it rules). There's a reason Fishman has been around so long. There's a lot of people around the AGF that pan this pickup but only a small percentage of those people are PROFESSIONALS. Alot of those people would be surprised at how many Fishmans show up on professional stages! K&K western mini pures, to me, the most OVERHYPED pickup on the AGF - boxy sounding at loud stage volumes, very susceptible to feedback, and low midrange woofy mids and their preamp doesn't address the correct frequencies most of the times as their center frequencies don't line up with the offending feedback and woof frequencies. (I've ripped these out of 4 guitars). The only pickup I found that was overhyped close to that extent was the Shertler DYN-G which also very problematic at high volumes and equally as ridiculously over-priced as the Trance pickups! And my stage amp is a Shertler JAM 400 with a channel dedicated to Schertler pickups!!! Why am I listing all these pickups? Because no one pickup works with every guitar. I had to swap out a ton of pickups to find what worked for each of my guitars. Even among the Martins I've found different pickups react different to the different models. On this site, I remember hearing a funny quote, with the gist being... Buying an acoustic guitar is when the fun starts, amplifying is where it stops Another thing I read a few posts back... "Don't get a pickup with a battery because it would suck if it went bad in a performance". Well to me, that's more than a little humorous. If you play for living, or at least frequently, you quickly learn to keep a few spare batteries around in your gig bag or case. Batteries last a long time, and are fairly cheap, and if the battery box is installed correctly it's very easy to change a battery during a string change. Live large, treat yourself to a new battery every few string changes, and this will never be a problem So my favorite pickup, which is in the most stage gigging guitars is FIRST the B-Band XOM 2.2 system. It's the most natural sounding of all the pickups I've bought and tested so far. Is it perfect? Nope. The things I don't like about it are, the preamp box is kind of cheaply made, there's a slight metallic ring to the UST (but easy to EQ Out), and the lead to the soundboard pickup is a bit short. Second, The Fishman Matrix Infinity. It's very easy to EQ, sounds good, and not as susceptible to feedback. It just doesn't sound quite as Natural as the B-Band. The one thing I can say for sure though is the the Empress PARA EQ was the best single purchase I made as it's helped all of these pickups easier to live with. But please don't get me started on preamps!!! Wait there's more.... another thing that I found here, is that a majority of people that love the pickups than I have panned, are mainly finger-pickers. I feel it's way harder to get a good strumming sound, as that's when most of the bad pickup artifacts become obvious. Want proof? Okay, plug your pickup's output directly into a good recording DI and then the DI into a decent recording system. First dial in your favorite fingerpicking tone, hit record, and then entertain yourself for awhile with that wonderful sounding finger-picked opus you just recorded, then start strumming! Listen to how that wonderful sounding figerpick pickup starts to compress the harder you strum. And as it compresses, listen to the brittle artifacts in the high register! It becomes fairly obvious very quickly that pickup is not the prettiest thing you ever heard. OKAY - Rant Over, flame me to death! Last edited by rockabilly69; 06-06-2016 at 04:12 AM. 
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#32
06-06-2016, 07:04 AM
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I think the problem with my Taylor and stubborn guitars in general, is that pickups are expensive and it's sometimes a pain to install them (new saddles etc). As a result, if a pickup doesn't work, we write it off. However, I am sure that in another guitar, the Anthem or Lyric would probably sound amazing. It's just expensive and not that exciting to go back and try something that didn't work before. I do still have the B-Band A2.2 XOM in a box, brand new. It was going to go into my Taylor before I finally made the choice to try the Anthem. I had written the Anthem off for years due to the scare of having my unplugged tone changed. However, I knew I liked the tone so I went ahead with it. Not only does it sound thin and bright but my unplugged tone has changed as well. It's hard to explain but it just doesn't sound the same. Baggs employees have confirmed that it alters the tone but they try to make it sound as though the change is generally a positive one. I am very tempted to either try the Amulet M or install the B-Band A2.2 XOM and see what it sounds like. I do worry that the B-Band ust might change my unplugged tone since it's fairly flimsy but I doubt it would be as bad as the Baggs Element. I too find that the preamp box with the B-Band is cheap. I also hate that the AST is a one time install (I don't think you can re-use it). I realize that the B-Band system probably won't sound as natural as the Anthem, Lyric, Trance or K&K but I think I am okay with that. One of my favourite pickup systems is the Takamine palathetic pickup and it's 100% a piezo based sysyem. Also, it is possible to add an internal mic to the B-band pickup if I want, it would just mean a stereo cable set up. I do a lot of strumming so I completely understand the frustration with making a pickup sound good with that style. I really have not come across that yet, other than the Takamine pickup. The Fishman Matrix is what it is. You can only do so much with it. I agree that it works well but it will always have that quack and unnatural tone. I like it more than the Baggs Element but I don't think I could ever put it at the top of my list.
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#33
06-06-2016, 09:39 AM
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No pickup works with every guitar or, I'll add, every guitarist. I am pretty sure that every pickup available is being used by working, touring musicians who are making them all sound great. Similar to guitars, one pickup may sound terrible to one player and like gold to another. I recently attended the Wilcox Weekend with David Wilcox who did a little rig rundown saying that at one point he had a drawer full of pickups he didn't like but realized each had their strengths and weaknesses. Now, he has at least 4 pickups in the guitar plus an external mic. He has two Pendulum modules hardwired for the eq he likes, plugging everything into a Bose Tonematch with radical eq's dialing out all the weaknesses. All the frequencies were covered and it all sounds great. He demonstrated a little bit isolating some of the pickups and it was really interesting to hear what was missing from each source. I certainly don't want to deal with that kind of complexity and I think that most people don't either. However, the sound of the instrument is so complex that one or two sources don't really cover it very well, so we make compromises for the sake of convenience and expense. What pickup should you get? I have no idea, I can tell you what I use but you might hate it in your guitar for your style in the settings you play...
__________________
"We got both kinds of music, we got country and western" ~ from The Blues Brothers
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#34
06-06-2016, 09:53 AM
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__________________
Martin GPCPA1 Sunburst Taylor 612ce Baby Taylor Ovation 1984 Collector's Takamine FP317S New Yorker Ibanez George Benson Gibson 339 Gibson 2017 J45 Custom Huss & Dalton CM sinker redwood Emerald X20 Woody Tom Anderson Crowdster Plus Maton Nashville 808 Maton Messiah
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#35
06-06-2016, 12:19 PM
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Funny thing, although I don't get along with Baggs pickups in my instruments, they have a GREAT customer service dept!
Last edited by rockabilly69; 06-06-2016 at 02:58 PM.
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#36
06-06-2016, 12:25 PM
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Last edited by rockabilly69; 06-06-2016 at 01:52 PM.
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