Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug Young
I would check with Gary Hull at Trance before trying superglue with the Trance pickups. The approach for a decade or 2 before the tape was available was Barge cement. I've tried both, and hear no difference - the tape works as well as the glue. Superglue, however, is like Kryptonite to Trance pickups :-) as far as I can tell.
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Thanks, Doug. Gary Hull also raised concerns when I asked him about mounting the Trance Amulet's transducers with superglue. He said something like you'll get too much treble-frequency noise. I think he also mentioned I'd ruin the pickup.
My main concern with using superglue with the Trance pickups is that it may separate the Amulet's bottom epoxy-surface from the plastic housing. My installation would be using a single moderate-sized drop of superglue quickly spread evenly around the epoxy surface and then pressed and held against the bridgeplate for a minute or so. This worked very well with the old Shadow metallic single-disk piezo systems that I installed back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. For an Amulet, superglue would likely be a one-time only installation as the pickup may come apart if trying to remove it.
Another alternative, for experimental purposes, would be to try using Elmer's mucilage glue (the stuff we used with the rubber applicator-tip when we were kids) and clamp the pickup in place overnight. This would provide a very thin mount and likely be removable but may not hold well for a permanent installation.
The only reason I want to try an alternative adhesive medium for mounting the Trance Amulet pickups is that even with the .009 inch thick tape, I firmly believe that the pickup's vibrational transference of bass and overall signal strength is being compromised. Intimate pickup contact with the bridgeplate is why K&K systems have so much bass and in-your-face presence and signal strength. Back in the 1970s, every pickup maker supplied either putty or beeswax with their systems and they all sounded pretty tinny. I forget what prompted me to try superglue on a Shadow system installation in a Martin HD-28, around 1979, but when I did it was like night and day compared to the Shadow system's supplied putty.