Acoustic guitar pickups

Tom Wolverton · From: Carpinteria, CA

I played a gig Sat night where both acoustic guitar players had their 9V batteries die during the gig. They claimed they had put freah ones in. Are 9V batteries getting crummier? Maybe stores are selling stale ones.

Are there any decent (non-soundhole) acoustic guitar pickups out there now that do not require a battery inside the guitar? The guitars are dreadnoughts.
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Mark Eaton · Posted 23 Feb 2015 10:18 am

Tom, I am a fan of the K & K Pure Mini.

I don't like any of the pickup systems where there is a 9 volt inside of the guitar body. My brother for example, has a Fender Buddy Miller signature dread that was only made for about three years. It has the Fishman Ellipse Aura which sounds pretty good plugged in, but like a lot of the 9 volt systems, it has the battery in a little velcro sack attached to the head block, where the neck connects to the body. I have seen too many guitars like this where it comes loose and the battery is banging around inside the guitar and you have to loosen the strings to re-velcro. No thanks. And the battery dies at the most inopportune moments. To replace it you have to loosen the strings, locate the battery sack, change the battery and then re-velcro. To me it's a pain in the butt.

I was at a show a few years ago when Dave Gonzales, post Hacienda Brothers, fronted a group called The Stone River Boys. The other singer and acoustic player was Mike Barfield. Mike had the same Fender Buddy Miller signature guitar, and he told me after the show that the battery died in the middle of a set one time too many but he really liked the guitar, so he took it to a luthier and had him cut a rectangle in the side and mounted a "barn door" pickup/preamp system for quick battery replacement. That's the only way I would ever go the 9 volt route, or with a Taylor or one of the newer Martin Performing Artist Series guitar where there is a convenient battery compartment next to the endpin.

The K & K Pure Mini is a passive system with three sensors that works best running into a preamp and to my ears it sounds pretty darn good. Very simple and uncluttered.

The other way to go would be to mount a piezo under-the-saddle pickup and run it through some kind of preamp/pedal tone shaping device like the Fishman Aura or the L.R. Baggs unit.

Link to the K & K:

http://www.kksound.com/products/purepickup.php

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Mark

Tom Wolverton · From: Carpinteria, CA

Thanks Mark. Yep, one guy has a Taylor Expression sustem, the other guy has that velcro sack inside the guitar. Sometimes the battery is ok and it's the clip or connection that has failed. Very aggrivating. The K&K looks like the winner. I think the guys are going to convert over.

My Natihorn fell over on-stage. More dings. Oh joy. : )
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Mark Eaton · Posted 23 Feb 2015 12:42 pm

Nooooooo!

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Mark

Tim Whitlock · From: Colorado, USA

Another endorsement here for the K&K system for a really good, natural acoustic sound. I can run my K&K equipped acoustic guitar directly to the board and get enough gain without using a pre-amp and there are no internal batteries.

I despise the quacky, plastic sounding peizo systems. I find them to be torture to my ears in a live setting and will never understand why you would install one in a high end or vintage acoustic instrument when any old POS will sound just as good (meaning BAD!). And don't get me started on using them for recording.

Tom Wolverton · From: Carpinteria, CA

Thanks.

Yeah, I can't believe that people would record with these things. Just lazy I guess. I heard a Stephen Stills CD that sounded piezo quacky on every song. Drove me crazy.

: )
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Mark Eaton · Posted 23 Feb 2015 2:37 pm

An under-the-saddle piezo pickup on its own going into an amp or the board is pretty much guaranteed to give one "quackery," but as I wrote above, if used with a sound shaping d.i. box/preamp unit like the Fishman Aura it pretty much tames the quack, same as the Jerry Douglas Aura pedal with the 16 mic images tames the quack of the Fishman Nashville resophonic piezo pickup.

I have a very nice Martin dreadnought from their Custom Shop that I got over three years ago, but I still haven't put a pickup in it. When I have brought the guitar for playing out it has been for acoustic only deals where I can get away with playing into a mic, not mixed acoustic/electric situations where a mic wouldn't work.

For this guitar were I to get around to it I'd likely go with the K & K, but after i owned the Martin for awhile, when I was visiting the shop one day where it was purchased, which is one of the best guitar shops in California, Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto, I asked if they installed K & K pickups, and they told me no. This surprised me because I thought if any shop around the region was into K & K it would be Gryphon.

They are into installing UST pickups, and I guess that is because they work properly with sound shaping devices like the Fishman Aura pedal box, or the L.R. Baggs Venue. These two aren't meant to be used with the K & K Pure Mini.

Except for a few very expensive acoustic pickups that might run you over a thousand bucks, the Fishman Aura combined with the Aura Spectrum pedal box containing mic images might be overall the best thing out there.

But for quality to price ratio and simplicity it's pretty hard to argue with the K & K and it still sounds very good.

The Stills CD you mentioned Tom - is that fairly recent? I can't imagine in the past several years or so him putting out a record and allowing the guitar to sound so quacky.
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Mark

Tom Wolverton · From: Carpinteria, CA

Mark, no the CD was mot recent. I'd tell you the title but I threw it out, long ago.

I have an old Roy Smeck Stage Deluxe with a Baggs under the saddle piezo. It has a quack to it. I tried running it thru a Fishman Aura Dreadnought pedal. Took the quack out. Sounded pretty darn good. But I gave that pedal to my son, Evin who runs it with his Martin. He gigs with it up in Chico. He has my old MSA too. : )
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Gary Meixner · From: New York, USA

Tom,

I installed a K&K pickup in my Martin 000-18 and it sounds very, very nice. No preamp required. However, a word of warning: the exact placement of the three pickups is quite critical. The smallest misalignment and the tone will be unbalanced. On my guitar the X brace makes it difficult to get the pad mounted on the bridge plate directly behind the high E string bridge pin. the result is a slight weakening of the treble signal. I am able to adjust, fore the most part, at the mix board. Also the bridge plate on this guitar is rosewood so if I choose to remove the pickup I can do so without damaging the guitar. A softer wood bridge plate might not be as easy. In either case the pickup will probably be ruined. All in all it is the best sounding contact pickup I have ever tried.

Gary Meixner

Mark Eaton · Posted 24 Feb 2015 5:01 am

Gary, are you a member of the Unofficial Martin Guitar Forum? If you are, then you have likely checked out any number of forum topics there concerning K & K pickups over the past several years.

If you aren't a member you should read the thread I have linked below, it discusses properly matched preamps to use with the pickup, which might alleviate your issue regarding a weak signal due to the placement of the sensor on the treble side. A lot more information there on this sort of thing compared to what we post about here - after all, this is The Steel Guitar Forum.

And yes, once those things are glued on there, there isn't an option to pry them loose and reposition them if you're not happy with the placement the first time around. A guy I play music with has them on three guitars, and they were installed by a local luthier here who has done a lot of installations of this pickup.

http://theunofficialmartinguitarforum.yuku.com/topic/158281/KK-Mini-pickup-is-a-KK-preamp-also-necessary#.VOxzUSifREc
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Mark

Michael Brebes · From: Northridge CA

I like the sound of the LR Baggs iBeam pickups. I use active ones in my guitars, but if you don't want batteries the non-active ones sound fine but you will need to use a preamp like the Para DI or Venue for them to sound their best.
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Michael Brebes
Instrument/amp/ pickup repair
MSA D10 Classic/Rickenbacher B6/
Dickerson MOTS/Dobro D32 Hawaiian/
Goldtone Paul Beard Reso

Mesa Boogie Studio Pre/Hafler 3000
RP1/MPX100

Rick Barnhart · From: Arizona, USA

Mark Eaton · Posted 24 Feb 2015 9:59 am

I looked up that CD, came out in 1991. As we know, acoustic guitar amplification has come a long way since then. I just listened to the version of Treetop Flyer off that album on YouTube. Quacky, but for whatever reason I don't hate it. Maybe because Stephen is also one of my favorite guitarists. He's using some type of chorus effect on this tune as well.

As Michael wrote, the Baggs iBeam is popular, and it seems to be sort of a hybrid between the K & K and a UST.

Some here might be familiar with the excellent Oregon-based guitarist Scott Law, and he seems like he's down here in the Bay Area most of the time anyway. He's played with Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, is a member of Brokedown in Bakersfield - excellent country band, and is also a fine acoustic bluegrass picker.

His acoustic guitar is a beauty, it's his own signature Santa Cruz model. I was talking to him after a 'grass show awhile back (he plays sometimes with dobro master Mike Witcher), he has a K & K in the Santa Cruz. We both decided that though it's a very good pickup it's well - still a pickup. For an all acoustic show you still can't beat a microphone. But mics often suck eggs in a mixed acoustic/electric situation.
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Mark

Tom Wolverton · From: Carpinteria, CA

Thanks for the info everyone. And thanks for that link Mark. Really interesting reading about the various Z matching issues. Glad I'm just using a mic these days in a quiet band.
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