LR Baggs Lyric placement

Wooly · #1 12-14-2017, 06:18 PM

I have a Lyric on order. I know the recommended placement is underneath the saddle but has anyone had experience with placing it behind the bridge pins and how does it sound in that position?

The reason I ask is because there is a K&K Mini installed now in this guitar which I'm not happy with. Too woofy / boomy. I have a K&K XLR preamp but still not what I'm looking for. In order to put the Lyric in the recommended spot, I would have to remove the K&K. I don't care if it gets destroyed but I don't know if I could cleanly remove the super glue left behind in order to install the Lyric under the saddle.

Doug Young · #2 12-14-2017, 08:17 PM

You can do that, I tried it back when the Lyric first came out. See this thread for some demo clips and discussion:

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=289058

I liked the result at first, the Lyric suffers maybe just a little, but if you combine both, it can sound good. Ultimately, I got away from this setup, but it could work - the Lyric depends a lot on the guitar and what kind of sound you're expecting.

Wooly · #3 12-14-2017, 08:52 PM

Thanks. That is what I was looking for. I'm going to place it behind the pins and leave the K&K in place. Maybe combine the two in the future.

terrapin · #4 12-14-2017, 10:14 PM

I don’t see the point if there is no crossover network in-line?

Doug Young · #5 12-14-2017, 11:14 PM

You don't necessarily need a crossover to do dual source - there are lots of ways to combine pickups that combine the characteristics of both. If you want to have each one handle a different frequency range, you can do that with a preamp by setting EQ differently. But each pickup brings its own characteristic to the table, not only tone, but attack and decay, what it picks up that's unique. Sometimes mixing them together just sounds better than one. You can run them in stereo in various ways, you can apply different effects to each one. On and on. There are only a couple of pickup systems out that use a crossover, and people have done dual source with other combinations for ages.

One of the reasons I eventually decided this wasn't a good combination for me was that in some ways there wasn't enough difference between the K&K and the Lyric - they both basically act like SBTs. It's usually more useful to combine elements that sound very different, mic+sbt, or mic+ust, or SBT+mag and so on, so you have some very different sounds to mix, to try to get some of the complexity that you lose with a single pickup. But you never know, and any combination is worth a try if you're into experimenting.

Wooly · #6 12-15-2017, 08:28 AM

If the boominess from the K&K is still there with the two pickups combined, then going dual source wouldn't be a good idea. That's what I'm trying to get away from.

Doug Young · #7 12-15-2017, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wooly

If the boominess from the K&K is still there with the two pickups combined, then going dual source wouldn't be a good idea. That's what I'm trying to get away from.

Adding a 2nd source shouldn't take away anything from one pickup, but it could add complementary sounds - like more high end to offset a bassier pickup. Boomy might be another issue. I've never encountered that with K&Ks, but I know it's a common complaint. You might be a candidate for James May's (one of the designers of ToneDexter) new add-on for K&Ks that dials out the resonances: http://www.jamesmayengineering.com/