Best Pickup for a Beater?

[midwinter]

Originally Posted by Treenewt

Midwinter, hows your experience been with the 330?

Mine is installed in my old 1991-ish Washburn D-21, which stays in my home town in case any gigs pop up on those rare occasions that I'm back there. I have only played one gig with it, but, through a PADI, it really sounded great. (I'm comparing it to my Breedlove American C25 with a Lyric).

If you want sound samples of the JJB, I can PM you a video.

[Treenewt]

Update:

Thanks for all the advice guys. I ended up getting a JJB 220 last week from Jesse to put in my beater. I intend on using this guitar for some events that our church does in which I don't want to use one of my nicer guitars. Last night was the first, a baptism service that we hold at a local indoor pool. The humidity in there is absolutely insane! It feels like a rain forest! The last one I did with one of my better guitars left it with a tremendous belly that I had to dehumidify for a week to correct! Hence my interest in an all-laminate with a decent sounding pickup.

Instillation of the JJB was super easy, no different than the 3 K&Ks I've done. This guitar has a very jerry-rigged bridge plate of a small piece of maple butted up with a piece of mahogany laminate. I thought I could only fit the 2 transducer pup, but in hindsight the 3 would have worked. Oh well.

Performance: I was very pleased with the sound and power that I got out of this little guitar with this pup. I ran it through my ultrasound DI and had to cut the bass a bit, but it sounded really nice and full. The mids weren't as pronounced as the bass and trebles, probably due to my spacing of the transducers. Again, a 3 transducer system prob would have worked, but for my purposes, it actually exceeded my expectations.

And the other big plus? I didn't have to tune once! That all lam beater performed wonderfully for an hour and fifteen minutes of straight playing!

So thanks everyone for your input and help! I think I'll give a JJB a try on the 330 on whatever and whenever I get my next guitar!

[rschultz]

I went through this exact process not too long ago. I concluded I didn't want a passive pickup and the K&K's specifically can get boomy… I didn't want to have to ensure I had an external preamp or any of that. I wanted to plug in and go, so an active pickup was necessary.

Considered UST's, and in the end found a good deal on a Baggs Anthem SL. $100. Yeah, probably more than most want to spend on a beater guitar, but I'm happy with that decision anyway.