Thanks for the report, rschultz.
Regarding substituting the K&K Pure Mini for the Element, its interesting to me that the K&K output is close enough to the Element output that a) its possible to set for a good Pure Mini/Tru Mic balance, and b) the Pure Mini doesn't overdrive the Element preamp, which is undoubtedly fixed at a gain which is appropriate for the Element.
I've read that some folks have successfully substituted a Pure Mini into a Fishman Prefix system, so it appears that the Pure Mini output is safely in the neighborhood of a film UST's output. I can't say the same for the Baggs LB6, a pickup which grossly overdrove (causing severe distortion from) the Prefix system which my tech wired it into. (We could have solved the problem by wiring a correctly sized capacitor in parallel with the pickup, but we weren't knowledgeable enough to manage that.)
How does the Pure Mini sound when the mix control is in full pickup position? I would have guessed that any "tone shaping" in the Element circuit would be overly bassy for the Pure Mini.
Regarding your comment that the mix control changes the crossover frequency, it was my understanding that the mix control blends in the full spectrum of the pickup frequencies. I thought the crossover frequency was fixed at 250Hz. In other words, when the mix control is on full mic, the mic supplies all the frequencies above 250Hz and the pickup supplies all frequencies below 250Hz. Have the Baggs folks stated that the crossover frequency changes somewhat with the mix setting? Ido recall Lloyd Baggs saying that they do something a little tricky with the mixer.
Regarding the handling noise issue, the Anthem doesn't pick up nearly as much handing noise as the Lyric because the Anthem's lower mic frequencies (below 250 Hz) are filtered out of the output signal (and replaced by a less top-responsive UST signal).
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