From: mpaul@unlinfo.unl.edu (marxhausen paul)
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar
Subject: Acoustic guitar pickups - thoughts & questions
Date: 4 Jan 1993 21:45:04 GMT
Organization: University of Nebraska--Lincoln	
Distribution: global
NNTP-Posting-Host: unlinfo.unl.edu

Well, it appears most of the posters here are doin' the solid body thang
for their guitar jollies, but I thought I'd float this out for those who
do any amplification of their acoustic guitars.

The questions first: what's your fave choice for amplifying your acoustic?
Piezos?  In-the-hole magnetics?  A good mike?  Any EQ or effects that you've
found especially helpful?

My contribution for those on a tight budget: the piezo-beeper pickup.  If you
can get yourself some of those little round piezoelectric beeper elements,
you can make your own pickup.  I got some "raw" ones - no plastic case, no drive
electronics, just the 5/8" bare disks - cheap once, but if you can't find them
like that you can usually find them in plastic cases at Radio Shack or other
electronics places very cheaply.  Solder the braid of a _skinny_ audio coax
cable to the metal base; gently scrape the top of the ceramic and _quickly_
tack solder the signal lead to the ceramic, preferably at the edge of the 
ceramic part.  Now you've got a pickup.  DON'T BEND IT IN ANY WAY, or the
ceramic element will crack.


Mounting: I'm lucky, my Alvarez has the bridge ornamentally carved in such a
way as to provide a small, perfectly flat square spot on each side of the 
bridge base, so I can anchor this disk completely flat on the bass side.  I
find that a Pritt glue stick or similar provides a waxy glue that sticks it
on very solidly - the tighter/more-solid contact you can get, the better - 
but is still just semi-permanent, you can pry it off without damaging the 
wood.  I suspect this kind of contact, directly to the hard wood of the
bridge base, will sound a whole lot better than trying to hang it on the 
wooden top of the guitar.  I'm curious about mounting inside, directly
underneat the bridge, but I've never tried it.  Incidentally, if your
skin touches this pickup when it's plugged in you'll get enormous HUMMMM,
so I stuck a piece of felt over the top of it.


How does it sound?  My friend the luthier thinks that as a rule these sound
like crap compared to, say, a Martin Thinline II or such; but I don't know if
he's heard one mounted as tightly as mine is.  Anyway...plugged through my
Peavey Studio Pro (12" speaker, open back) it sounds WRETCHED.  Loud, but
bad.  Through our church's Peavey KB100 keyboard amp, with a sealed 15"
driver and piezo tweeters, it sounds WONDERFUL.  Big, loud, well balanced.
If you didn't already know it, amps that sound awesome with solid body electrics
may be total trash for an acoustic guitar.  This pickup also has plenty of
drive, and I was able to run it straight into a Roland flanger without any
kind of preamplification at all, with no apparent "loading" effects.  Nice.
I've tried hanging one on my good classical guitar; I wasn't terribly 
impressed with the result.


My next experiment will be with mounting a tiny electret condenser mike car-
tridge somewhere on/in the guitar.  The ones you get off the rack at Radio
Shack are crap, but for a couple bucks a pop you can get elements elsewhere
that are a lot closer to flat response 20-20K - I've rigged these up to
mike an upright piano with very good results.

 
--
paul marxhausen .... ....... ............. ............ ............ .......... 
 .. . .  . . . university of nebraska - lincoln .  . . .. . .  .. . . . . . . .
 .     .    .  .   .     .   .  .    .   .  .   .    .   .  grace .   .    .  . 
   .         .       .      .        .        .      .        .   happens .     
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar