Installing a pickup

[erniecaster]

Originally Posted by Mandobart

A dozen times, with two examples given. I can drive any pickup/amp system to feedback. Adding piezo pickups to a soundboard turns it into a microphone. You have to balance stage volume, gain settings, EQ, speaker (main and monitor) placement and your own playing style/stage position to deal with it. I have added piezo pu's to multiple acoustic instruments and know how to make them work in a solo, duo or full band. In a full band with electric guitar, bass and drums it takes cooperation between everyone to make it work. I absolutely can get full acoustic sound from an arch top instrument using twin head soundboard pu's and an acoustic amp or preamp with a PA.

Was the Fishman an undersaddle pu? These have inherent problems leading to the banjo-y sound. UST's are under constant strain so they are biased toward saturation. This leads to distortion and "quack" which players spend a lot of money and effort to try to eliminate. Easier to not introduce it in the first place.

Hi,

these were just two examples, I tried a lot more pickups. Shadow, B-Band, Baggs to name some more. Maybe, no probably I did not try hard enough as the archtop never was my main instrument. To me - of course my fault - it did not work to amplify it without getting to electric sounding. (I play my Ibanez Artcore a lot but as an electric guitar).

With contact pickups like the K&K or the B-Band AST (and some other brand I forgot) I received feedback as soon as the electrified sound was louder than the acoustic. I play a lot on my amplified flattops where I did not have this problem. Internal mics were difficult to use as well.

To get out the quack of a UST, I had to use really dramatic eq-settings. In the end, the quack was gone but it did not sound good. Maybe I just don´t like the acoustic sound of an archtop when it´s louder.

cu

erniecaster

[OnTheLedge]

I recently went with a Lace Sensor UltraSlim pickup on my vintage archtop. It sounds good and it requires no drilling or cutting. The jack attaches to the end pin like a strap and the pickup mounts with double sided tape. They have a model with a permanently mounted jack also.

http://m.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Lace-Senso...805?nav=SEARCH