Putting A Sound Hole Pickup (Fishman Rare Earth) in a 12 Fret RainSong (Parlor)

[jonfields45]

I did not want to drill my new RainSong Parlor as I'd already taken the drill to my older Parlor. To my mind a good sound hole pickup is:

1) Light, small, no external battery for quick installation and removal.
2) Highly feedback resistant.
3) No hard materials touching your guitar to leave a mark.
4) Humbucking so that it works at gigs with florescent lights or a nearby compressor.
5) Active so that the inherent low pass filter formed by the coil of a magnetic pickup (worse for dual coil humbucking) does not kill the highs.
6) Classic great magnetic tone for single note leads.
7) No piezo artifacts.
8) Some loss of acoustic goodness finger picked.
9) Permanent cable -- no 3.5 mm jack on pickup to fail.

It seems like a Fishman Rare Earth Humbucker checks all these boxes. I know dual source or floating coil pickups sound better for (8) but those pickups sacrifice too many of my other goals. To my ear and compared to my Mi-Si Trio, which is hardly the AGF approved K&K Mini into a ToneDexter, it is different but I might like it a touch better.

But, the 12 fret RainSong neck has only 18 frets which places the pickup too far away from the bridge and the high E hits the pickup for frets 16-18 (outro to Hotel California and my arrangement of Hey Jude for fingerstyle). I did lower the action slightly from the factory 7/64" and 5/64", low/high E, 12th fret, to 3/32" and 2/32", but I think this is a very common action target. It was a little trickier to fix than I planned and I thought I would share my learning.

The problem (crappy focus...)


After removing the cork pads from the pickup body using a sharp knife followed by Goo Gone with a tooth pick to get the last of the adhesive. Notice there is a lip around the place where the cork went. Thin felt won't clear it.


1/10" Felt from Home Depot:


Now it won't tighten closed on the thin top of a RainSong.


Here's why, there is a tab on the clasp that runs in a channel down the side of the pickup housing:


Need to add felt to the clasp too:


Open:


Closed:


Fixed:

[kramster]

Cool...nice job..I put one (Sunrise) in a Cargo back in the day