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Soundhole pickup for acoustic guitar ?


EmolanEric

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Hello,

I have this pickup (bought it from ebay) installed in my acoustic guitar. I replaced the original pickup with Fender strat pickup. It sounds quite good but it gets lots of buzz and hum. But I really like the volume and tone controls on the soundboard. Does anyone have a suggestion, what kind of better soundhole pickup could be wired, so that I could use existing volume and tone controls.

Thanks in advance!

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First, I can't believe a Strat pickup sounds "quite good" in an acoustic guitar unless the goal is to make it sound like an electric. Good acoustic soundhole pickups are voiced to sound--well--acoustic. I also cringe when I see a guitar that's had holes drilled in its top for volume and/or tone controls. It looks like your guitar used to be a nice little Yamaha. There are soundhole pickups that have built-in volume controls like the Baggs M1 Active, not so much tone controls. However, if you're handy with a soldering iron and you're ready for an amplified acoustic that sounds like an amplified acoustic, a budget pickup would probably be the Fishman NeoD. The single coil version runs around $50, the humbucking version runs about $90. Fishman makes more expensive pickups as well such as the Rare Earth, $130 in single coil, $170 in humbucking. You can check out clips of various pickups here: http://www.dougyoungguitar.com/pickuptests/

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To get rid of the hum, What you want to do is either replace the two separate conductors with shielded wire. This is delicate work because you are soldering to the eyelets on the pickup that also have the coil winds. You have to be careful because you break those thin wires and you have a dead pickup. You could also wrap the two conductors in copper foil and solder it to ground. It does the same basic thing.

 

The strat pup will still hum a bit because the coil is not humbucking and its not in a sealed metal case that's grounded. Something like a dean markley "woody" pickup is likely hum bucking and shielded to prevent hum.

 

The other thing you can do which will help allot is to place a strip of copper foil tape under the bridge where the bridge pins go through and the string ends contact it, then run a thin wire to ground. This will make the strings work like an electric guitar. When you touch the strings, your body, (which is mainly a bag of salt water) will become grounded and collect stray AC EMF waves and carry them to ground. In other words, when you touch the grounded strings, You body acts like a force field to block the ac noise from getting into the pickup.

 

Fender pickups do a fair job on acoustics by the way. Not too much bass response but the mids and highs are pretty good. I put a Tele neck pickup inside a Banjo below the head awhile back. Its not as good as a piezo bridge but good enough to add some amplification without having mic feedback. I suppose I should try it through some distortion boxes and see what kind of crazy electric banjo sounds I can get.

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Hello,

I have this pickup (bought it from ebay) installed in my acoustic guitar. I replaced the original pickup with Fender strat pickup. It sounds quite good but it gets lots of buzz and hum. But I really like the volume and tone controls on the soundboard. Does anyone have a suggestion, what kind of better soundhole pickup could be wired, so that I could use existing volume and tone controls.

Thanks in advance!

 

 

I have a similar pick up on my old Eko Ranger VI and it works very well - no hum or buzz at all. I suspect you might have a poor earth connection or some other fault.

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I have a similar pick up on my old Eko Ranger VI and it works very well - no hum or buzz at all. I suspect you might have a poor earth connection or some other fault.

 

Yours likely has shielded cable to the pickup. If you look inside the hole in that pic, you can see the two separate black and white single conductor wires from that Strat pup. He's wide open for hum not having those wires shielded.

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These Dean Markey sound as good as you can expect from an inductive pickup on an acoustic. http://www.deanmarkley.com/products/by-subcategory/2-catalog/84-promagi

 

Its still better to install a good Piezo element under the bridge or Piezo mic combo and use a high quality preamp to get a natural acoustic sound.

 

With the pickup he has, he may be able to improve the tone with an acoustic modeler pedal like sans amp or a clone like this. http://www.zzounds.com/item--BEHADI21 I have the guitar and Bass versions and they do a pretty good job for dialing up tones without busting your wallet.

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Yours likely has shielded cable to the pickup. If you look inside the hole in that pic, you can see the two separate black and white single conductor wires from that Strat pup. He's wide open for hum not having those wires shielded.

 

 

Mine does indeed have a shielded cable. It's certainly worth the OP trying your suggestion.

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I had a diMarzio sound-hole pick-up a long time ago in my old Guild D-25. I thought it sounded pretty good. It was about $50.

 

I also have K&K Western Mini, Fishman Blenders. But I don't fault the diMarzio at all. Good value for the money. Of course, the D25 had a Mahogany top. That may be one advantage for a magnetic acoustic-guitar pick-up.

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I remember those old DeArmond pickups. I encounted one years ago. A young guy had one in a Harmony 12-string. Several years ago, the rhythm guitarist at a church where I was guest preaching had one in an Epiphone but the lead guitarist was drowning him out. The current crop of "acoustic" pickups sounds pretty good. I don't recall that being true of the old DeArmonds.

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