Lessons learned installing K&K

[Cuki79]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

Cuki suggested there may be a better tape option out there.

I use TESA 4965 tape. I visited Doug Young this week and I thought I could use Trance Tape to test my Pickup v5 with him... Well Trance Tape is really difficult to handle compared to the TESA tape.

As far as thickness I thought I chose the TESA tape so it is quite close. But I like it better than the Trance definitively.

Note: The problem of the Trance is not a glue vs tape or a tape vs tape problem. It is about the tone you want to achieve. The stronger the bond, the more high-end... I don't like the Trance high-end anyway. I can't say I like pickup v5 high-end much better... Doug told me it would be great if I could enable to fine tune the pickup v5 response. I am thinking about it.

For the low-end, I can think of two strategies:

• allowing a longer suspended length.
• Allowing the user to add mass manually

For the high-end, I can think of two strategies too:

• allowing part of the film to lay in the air, being fixed only at one hand.
• allowing to add tension to the film.

I probably need to do a new Lego experiment to test those ideas...

[Petty1818]

Interesting insight on the glue experiments with the Amulet and HFN. It's odd how some SBT's respond best to being as close as possible to the bridge plate where as others like the HFN and Amulet actually benefit from a thicker adhesive. I thought the HFN sounded great but I just could never get the low E to sound right. It's hard to explain but it wasn't a weaker signal, it just didn't seem to the sustain the same way. I also used it live and it seemed to get buried in the mix. If I could have gotten that low E bass, I would still have it in my guitar.

[MaurysMusic]

Very interesting indeed. I hold my K&K discs in place for 30 seconds and I use enough glue to ensure even coverage but I've never consciously tried to use as little as possible.