Official Luthiers Forum!

What kind of systems exist out there that allow u to switch between under saddle pickups and soundhole based true electric guitar pickups (humbuckers, fender style pickups, etc). It would be nice if such a system existed where I could switch source, and use same volume & tone controls. This sounds like advanced, expensive stuff. That's ok.

Mike, consider this as useful for background only, the last time I played with this was about 15 years ago. Hopefully someone with some current information will jump in soon.

The switching part is easy, the problem is where you send the signal to. The electric guitar pickups are low impedance and the under saddle pickups are high impedance. The signals have to be handled differently at the amplifier input. Or at least the under saddle pickup needs to go to a preamp with a high-impedance input.

One of the things that I've done on electric guitars is to build a custom on-board preamp/mixer to handle and blend both signals so they can sent to a soundboard. In this case the acoustic/electric mix can be varied from all piezo to all electric and anywhere in between. There is only one output and it can go to an electric guitar amp or a sound board. If you are electronically inclined I can try to find the circuit I used.

A simpler solution that I've also used is to use a stereo cable for each pickup. The stereo cable splits into two individual cables and provides two separate output signals, an electric and an acoustic.

I think to do what you want to do would basically require a low-gain preamp to handle the high impedance under saddle pickup and convert it into a low impedance signal so it could go through the standard tone/volume controls - assuming you're speaking of a typical electric guitar circuit.

I'm not aware of a commercial product that will do this but, like I said, it's been a while.

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

_________________
Ken Cierp

http://www.kennethmichaelguitars.com/

That's it

_________________
Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Way cool site. Thank you! And thanks Steve!