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I'm picking along on giving shape to my next project. I'm speculating about installing a pickup 'just because', to touch on an option that gets frequent use, although in my case I can't see my need for one. So....does anyone have any advice about what pickup to build in? I think for simplicity's sake that I wouldn't be providing any volume/tone controls/preamp/battery on the guitar and I'd rely on the amplifier/sound operator to manage adjustments. My bias would be towards ease of installation (and removal, come to that).

Thanks!

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Peter Havriluk

Sure happy to help Peter. I install pick-ups every week or so and have two to install tomorrow, Monday. Both Baggs Anthems into two 12 strings.

Some background and recommendations first though:

We see it frequently where a major manufacturer relied on third party proprietary electronics that may only last 5 - 10 years in an otherwise heirloom built guitar. The pick-up fails and owners are sent scrambling for replacements that will use the very same modifications to the instrument that the original manufacture did to the instrument to make it whole again. Some of these guitars have massive control panels in holes in the sides..... and at times no suitable replacement that uses the same form factors.

They are not always in luck and replacements can be anything from nonexistent to few and far between leaving no one any choice on performance, tone, etc.

With this said I would strongly recommend that no one build a guitar around a specific pick-up. You will be sorry eventually if you do.

The good news is there are lots of aftermarket pick-up choices that do not modify the instrument in an irreversible manner and create a dependency on an electronics company that may go treats up in time.

So I can tell you what we tell our clients and what they do with the information and I can also tell you what I've done for myself with my own 3 month old now Martin CEO7 that is my retirement guitar since we are a Martin certified warranty center shop I wanted a Martin for myself. When I started building I gave my three Martins away to force myself to play my own stuff thinking I would get better faster if I had to suffer.... This is my first Martin in 20 years and I love it.

All of my recommendations can be installed and removed without a trace except for the reaming of the output jack hole and the Anthem requires two holes in the saddle slot.

Recommendations:

1). For flat picking simplicity, great tone and fast, easy installation that most here could do with some advice the K&K pure mini is hard to beat. I'm home right now and have one in the box downstairs in my home lutherie shop to install in my new Martin CEO7. Yes that's right the guy who installs pick-ups for others picked the K&K for his own ax.

They are inexpensive around $110 from Amazon and delivered the next day where I live.

To my ear this pup is best for folk, bluegrass, rock and blues. It does finger style OK but I think there are better choices for the finger style player.

A huge advantage of the K&K is it's passive meaning no battery to ever worry about. Many of my clients are gigging musicians and when you need a pup you likely are a gigging musician even if it's just a jam with the ole high school garage band members who are still kicking. My gigging clients have me changing batteries all of the time because they worry about losing a battery during a gig. No worries with K&K. No battery at all.

Downside: People struggle with the placement of the transducers and working with CA blind in the box. FYI transducer placement is not critical.... provided that one is close to the intended locations of the three transducers. Dave uses a jig and vacuum to hold the transducers I do it free hand.

2) Baggs Lyric even easier to install than the K&K and no super glue required. Just be sure to hit your bridge plate with some 220 paper to smooth it out, wipe off any dust well before using the peel and self-stick for the mic. That's all there is to it.

This pup is best for a lush sounding instrument with a finger style player. I find the mic does feed back if you are not careful with amp or PA speaker placement and being a mic you will hear noise from impacts with the top, heavy picking, etc.

I have a Lyric in one of my Heshtone prototypes a L-OO that I play or played the most before I got my Martin. When I get near my Dumble clone that I play through most of the time (RedPlate that I had custom made for me by my friend Keith and I love this amp) I can get some Dumble sized feed back that is not good.

If it goes in a lousy sounding instrument true to form you will get lousy tone so best for a decent sounding instrument.

$160ish IIRC

3). My favorite for some years now is the Baggs Anthem which can do all styles of music well, has a UST (under saddle transducer) and the mic from the Lyric. Downside is installation it's nearly like installing two pick-ups so it takes a little longer. There are tricks to how to install a UST well AND the saddle must be reviewed for suitability and proper fit for a UST. The saddle must also be milled down 0.032" to keep the same action because of the thickness of the UST.

With or without the Baggs preamp that you said you want to avoid it can sound wonderful and in terms of tone it's my number one pick. They are pricey though $260 and up.

You can play any style of music with this pick-up and adjust it for some of the best performance and tone available in my experience.

4) The new Baggs HiFi is excellent but I've only installed a handful and know what I think of the great tone but I need feed back from customers before elevating this pup higher which it likely should be. I do have concerns of double sided tape for installing the various elements many gigging folks may gig outside in high RH and that does not mix with tape generally speaking....

These are medium difficulty to install and the tone is about as good as I have ever heard. Installation is reversible as it is with all of these except the Anthem requires holes in the saddle slot (2) for the UST making the Anthem not totally reversible.

Others like Fishman can be very good and the bottom line is that many of the offerings are excellent. These are simply my favorites that I have a lot of experience with.

There are less expensive pick-ups but we don't recommend preferring to stick with main stream choices. There is also a tendency for those doing the recommendations to apply our own bias in all that we do and say... to when we are asked about something.

My clients are not cheap.... an inexpensive solution is not at all high on their CTQ (critical to quality in Six Sigma speak) list. Instead they want reliable, time tested and safe to gig with inside, outside, you name it. They also don't want their prized guitar hacked up for someone's proprietary solution only to find that pick-up company perished and they now have unsupported 10 year electronics in a 100 year heirloom instrument. Not good.

Lastly there are lots of good choices including many that I did not mention. These are what I've gone with and done hundreds and hundreds of installations and never had any negative feedback (pardon the pun) from clients with these choices.

So for me K&K for flat picking, Lyric for finger style, Anthem for anything and the HiFi I have my eye on and think that tonally.... it may be the best there is I just need more experience with it AND it's over $400 clams.

Hopefully something here will be of value to you Peter.

I’m a big fan of the Schatten Designs HFN Passive…

thanks, Hesh.

Food for thought. It's nice to see the price comparisons, too. I'm leaning toward a don't-install-till-you-need-it approach, installing one when I want to use it and not before; the comments on obsolescence impressed me, and I might as well install something that was current at the time of installation, whenever that happens to be.

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Peter Havriluk

Peter,
Check out JJB Electronics which is very similar to K&K but lots cheaper, or the Shatten soundboard transducer From StewMac. Both very affordable and sound fine in my latest builds.
Carl

Peter a plain old mic is always an option too and the sound quality with the right mic and mix can be superior to any pick-up.

The Sound hole pick-ups people do buy and try and in my experience we see them a week later when they hated the cord being in the way much of the time coming out of the sound hole. Then they look for an installed solution.

You know too if using a pick-up for you is such an exception to your usually playing I would just mic the guitar.

Different strokes are in play here. As you, Peter and I have both considered a least invasive solution with the least mods if any to the instrument the very last thing I would ever do is go off brand for a pick-up that has to have installation and modifications to the instrument. But again different strokes for me I want some certainty that a company will endure as long as their thing installed in my guitar does.

Both of the other solutions mentioned we never see anyone asking us to install they are not common choices in the market place. To be clear I don't sell pick-ups. My recommendation means that our clients goes and sources their pick-up wherever they wish. My only involvement is advice and installation. It makes no difference to me what I install but I do care that my client is happy with the end result.

Nice to see you understand the value of installing something current. A pick-up is considered tech and the last thing I would do is purchase an old computer that can barely handle the operating system these days and consider it a bargain at any price.

Pick-ups in the last ten years have improved substantially and the old stand by favorites are now noticeably behind the performance of the newer ones. The Baggs HiFi is likely the best sounding pick-up ever made in my limited (maybe five installs) experience with it. Being a professional Luthier if I wanted to spend that much money and the ultimate in headroom, frequency response and noise avoidance as well as what the company behind it looks like historically and into present time that might be my first choice for myself. But I'm cheap so I went with the K&K

Consider a decent mic it's easier and zero mods to the instrument.

Since I mentioned it I installed a Baggs HiFi this Am and I like this pup but it's not a good match for a 12 string and will require work arounds in transducer placement and you have to do it all free hand the tools for transducer locating are useless.

This would not be a problem with the K&K that it's a 12 it makes no difference to the K&K installation is the same.

The problem is the transducers are installed on the plate in front of the pair of E and B and in front of the pair of E and A. The transducer cable is then run between the pin holes to the jack. But on a 12 string there is an entirely separate course of 6 more stings located between the pin holes of the first course. The cables have to be "creatively" routed forward and then off to one or two sides. This required more cable management clips attached to the top which is something I never like to do.

It works OK and the client will be thrilled but someone needs to let folks know that if you buy this for a 12 you better have some decent installation chops...

I built a special guitar for a friend. What he wanted was "an acoustic guitar that looks like an ES-175). He is an electric player but said that this guitar would never be plugged in. I was a little uncertain about my top and bracing and it would have f-holes so there would be no access to the interior after the box was closed so I hedged my bets and installed a K&K Pure Mini while I had the back off.



I adjusted the jack, then put it up inside the guitar with a little string to the end jack hole, that way I could finish the guitar and then pull the jack into position



Guitar was completed and fortunately turned out sounding pretty good unplugged. I doubt that it has ever been plugged in but the pickup is there in case he wants to. The K&K i relatively inexpensive, sounds good, is completely passive so there is no volume or tone pot.

A couple more thoughts. The K&K has become my go to pickup for acoustics. Its easy to install on a pinned bridge (hard to remove if you use gel CA which I do). Slightly trickier with a tie bridge but still pretty reasonable. Reasonably priced (just over a hundred bucks last time I bought one). Passive so it needs a DI or preamp and doesn't have the convenience of knobs on the guitar. Reacts to bridge/top vibration so its a different sound from either piezos or mag pickups.

I would say that if you have any idea the guitar will ever be plugged in do as I did and install it while you are building.

Good advice from Hesh and others. I will admit I'm a K&K fan and have installed quite a few of them. On new builds I install them before closing the box then tape the jack to the top, not a big deal or even a huge time-saver but it is a bit easier.

The K&K mini works very well in my opinion and, as Freeman noted, requires no battery. It just sits there until it's needed. I played a concert last night and the electric bass (on my right) player's battery went out and he missed the last couple of songs. I hate batteries in guitars! Fortunately we had an upright bass (on my left) and he picked up the slack plus I did what I could on the low E and A string. Worked out ok, doubt if anyone in the audience knew.

I use mics in the studio, of course and they are a good option on stage as well.

Here's a photo of my work area last night just behind the violins (notice they are all mic'd) and about 6 feet in front of the woodwind/brass section. About 75 in the choir. No feedback or other issues with my sound. I'm using a K&K Pure Mini through a Red-Eye Twin preamp and Strymon Reverb and Chorus pedals. For outside gigs or when I don't have my pedals I use a K&K Pure XLR preamp which will operate off of a 9V battery or phantom power. The K&K Pure preamp would be a good option if you don't need the XLR/phantom power option.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

thanks,folks.More food for thought. Again, I have no intention of ever using a pickup, but I might be presented with the possibility of someone using it in performance. I seldom hear the guitars I've made (I can't hear them much while I'm torturing them) and it might be a treat to be part of the audience.

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Peter Havriluk

Brilliant!!! Bravo, well done Freeman!

I'll add since the K&K is passive with no battery required the circuit's complexity is very simple and it should last for years and years.

Very cool Steve. I have gigging clients who are so paranoid and rightly so of a battery failure during a gig that they have me changing their battery several times a year likely needlessly. We forget sometimes that for us changing a battery even with strings on is no big deal but for someone away from home it can be a big deal.

Great idea!

I use medium CA a 1/8" drop in the center of the transducer and I wipe the bridge plate before hand with a paper towel that I sprayed with accelerator. I can feel my finger get hot as the CA kicks off and 10 seconds is more than enough hold time. In my experience that 1/8" drop of medium viscosity works great and there is virtually no squeeze out by keeping the drop small.

I've avoided gel CA likely needlessly it's probably fine but I do want the glue line thin as can be but not rolling off the transducer if I don't keep it flat on the way to it's location working blind in the box. Of course all my installations are in closed boxes.

I also like to loop the cable once and adjust the loop size so that no wire retainers required and nothing is weighting the top or touching it. Link Van Cleave turned me on to the looping. With this done and said my K&K installs don't require any wire management beyond the adjustable loop.

You're right it's a stand out product for us and one of the few very good values in the pick-up market. It's also as reliable as can be.

We have successfully removed them too with saving the transducers about 50% of the time but we advise clients that it's a 50% chance that the transducers will be damaged. Because of the low cost of replacement they have the freedom to attempt to move or replace the K%K too without always taking a financial hit.

The only problem I can see with a K&K is if you had to reglue a bridge it would be difficult to seat a clamp against the bridge plate.

They are also very nice people, down in Oregon I think. I had a nice conversation about matching their transducers to electronics already installed in the guitar (they didn't recommend it but made some good suggestions).

I've had to reglue a bridge with a K&K installed on the plate and I put two thick layers of leather on my caul with wax paper on top of the stack and it worked great. The leather let the surface of the caul conform to the transducers and wires and the wax paper kept glue off it all.

I've also reglued a bridge with a K&K installed. I just put some of the big-box-store pink insulating foam (about 1/4" thick) on my caul and clamped away. Worked fine.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Excellent thread my friends, thanks for sharing your experience and information.

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Measure Twice,

Karl Borum