Hot Dot on old Alvarez 5055

[hotliks]

Greetings.. I have an Alvarez 5055 I purchased new back in the 70`s.. at one time in the later 70`s I had a Barcus Berry Hot Dot installed...its on the bottom side closer to the B E strings...a friend of mine had two installed on his, one one top and one on the bottom,, right beside the adjustable bridge..it works better that way... ... anyway, havent used the pickup for years and just found a Hot Dot box with adjustable gain... new battery ... it works but have to really crank up the volume to get much...would it be worth puttting an additional hot dot above the bridge to get lower notes or is it old tech. and should just start over... I have a dimarzio soundhole pickup that is much louder than the Hot Dot ...but the sound is to be desired...just thought Id throw that out there to see if anyone had any suggestions as to what route to take ...

[mstuartev]

Originally Posted by hotliks

Greetings.. I have an Alvarez 5055 I purchased new back in the 70`s.. at one time in the later 70`s I had a Barcus Berry Hot Dot installed...its on the bottom side closer to the B E strings...a friend of mine had two installed on his, one one top and one on the bottom,, right beside the adjustable bridge..it works better that way... ... anyway, havent used the pickup for years and just found a Hot Dot box with adjustable gain... new battery ... it works but have to really crank up the volume to get much...would it be worth puttting an additional hot dot above the bridge to get lower notes or is it old tech. and should just start over... I have a dimarzio soundhole pickup that is much louder than the Hot Dot ...but the sound is to be desired...just thought Id throw that out there to see if anyone had any suggestions as to what route to take ...

technology being the way that it is, I'd just spring for a K&K or JJB Pickup. I have an old Barcus Berry pickup with the gooey residue on it from the 70's and I can't get a good sound out of it.

[Steve DeRosa]

Back in the mid-70's I had a pair of those BB Hot Dots on a (since-sold) Gibson B45-12; in a word, they stunk (I hear the single-dot tone was even worse) - and as you state, the preamp box wasn't even worth the price of the parts it was made from (used to use mine to help smooth the tone of an old Epiphone Rivoli hollow-body bass I had at the time). I say ditch it in favor of something newer/better - it was far from cutting-edge technology forty years ago (Ovation and FRAP had a lock on that end of things) and IMO it's not worth the headaches of trying to make it into something it'll never be - and use the preamp box as an outboard pad/EQ with a full-on electric guitar rig...

[pmichael]

Anyone got a couple of the old Hot Dots available?

[JLS]

I worked at SLM, remember installing those...don't bother. They were, and are, awful.

[SpruceTop]

I had a Guild D-40 that had factory-installed Barcus-Berry Hotdots, one at each end of the bridge. I routed it through my Barcus-Berry Preamp but it didn't sound all that good. Right after that I bought an Ovation Custom Legend that was light-years better!