Anyone Use The Fishman Rare Earth Blend Pickup for Fingerpicking?

[BluesKing777]

I bought my Fishman Rare Earth Blend quite a few years ago - it is a good solution for electrifying guitars you don't want to permanently alter, but...I don't really like the sound.

So, I bought a Lowden O22 a few months ago and looking at pickup options, I see the reinforced soundhole and the split saddles need modified solutions eg. the Baggs Anthem needs to be bought from Lowden to get the parts to fit. Fishman undersaddles also....

So yesterday I dragged out the Rare Earth Blend and put it in the soundhole, fiddled for a while and settled on about 30% pickup to 70% internal mic. Sounded ok - the large body O22 is nicer with the mic I thought, than previous use with my smaller body guitars.
So what can I do for eq, volume...aah, I have the old Fishman Pro EQ I had to have years ago and used probably twice! So, vol, eq, compress, line out - this could do the trick.

While it still has an 'electric' kind of mag pickup sound in there with the little bit of 'air' from the mic, I really think it suits the big O22 for some reason and I think I will keep the pickup there to experiment with for a bit longer. I mean, it is pretty similar to the Baggs Anthem setup, well soundwise to me....

Fingerpicking sounds different with this setup, than strumming. Any other fingerpickers use this pickup?


BluesKing777.



edit:

If you want to hear it, I just recorded my version of Robert Johnson's "Phono Blues" using the O22 with pickup direct to mixer and vocal with my Neumann KM184:


https://soundcloud.com/bk7-3/phonoblues-o22pickup7b



BluesKing777.

[jemartin]

Thanks for the reminder. I bought one about 2 years ago to put in a Taylor GS7 with a cedar top. It sounded good enough through my Roland Acoustic amp. The problem I had with it is that it is so heavy that it affected the unplugged tone of that guitar.... deadening the volume output when it was unplugged. I have bought a Taylor 518 jumbo recently and should try the Rare Earth in it... and see how it sounds while fingerpicking.