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New pickup for J-45... suggestions?


J-45Girl

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I finally got my long-awaited sunburst J-45 a few months back. It has an Adirondack top and is absolutely lovely, very dry and resonant!

 

I originally had a Baggs M1A soundhole pickup in it and that was ok. I got to thinking a K&K would be better as that's what my other guitars have and I have been very happy with the live sound. I've run the J-45 through a few different preamps and twiddled with the mixer but I can't seem to completely get rid of the boomy bass and overall muddiness. Even with a soundhole plug I still have a problem with feedback. I have no feedback/muddy/boomy issues with my other K&K equipped guitars run through the same system. The J-45 is the most comfortable to play, suits my style the best, and I'd like to use it pretty much exclusively if I can.

 

I am ready to accept that this is not the right pickup for this particular guitar and wondering what else you all would suggest. I don't want anything with a microphone in it, just for simplicity's sake. Unless I am playing at a large venue or festival, I sort out my own sound and while I have a good understanding of the basics, I am not a soundman. I am very tempted to just go back to a Baggs M1A as when I ran it through a RedEye or Headway preamp, the sound was fairly nice without the usual mag electric vibe. I haven't used an undersaddle pickup in years so not sure what they would be like through a good preamp, they have probably come a long way since the quackiness of the 1990's!

 

Any suggestions?

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I have a J50 with a K&K mini. I either run it through a Red Eye Fire Eye into a Bose stick, which sounded great and was simple, but more recently as I have started gigging with a few guitars with different pickups, I tried to set up a pedal which I could use for all of them (with tweaking of course). This is my pedal:

 

I1WxVy4l.jpg?1

 

 

 

Note that the first pedal is a Boss TU3-W (it has that ohm match that K&K's like - as does the K&K preamp, the orchid muting DI, and the Fire Eye). Next is a decent EQ pedal - the Boss Ge7. For the K&K on my J50, i end up sweeping down the mids on the Ge7.

 

 

The other pickup that I really like... is the one that comes standard with the new J45s - the Baggs Element VTC. You can dial down the bass, and the UST is soft and does not sound quacky at all in my opinion. As a matter of fact, I bought one forum member's J45 with this Element VTC, and it sounds great. My gigging buddy is still using it on a long-term-borrow at the moment. He likes the sound so much he put an Element VTC into his Martin D41.

 

Anyways - I am a K&K guy. They do sound best when they go through that whole matched OHM impedance thing, which I wont pretend I understand.

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.....I can't seem to completely get rid of the boomy bass and overall muddiness. Even with a soundhole plug I still have a problem with feedback. I have no feedback/muddy/boomy issues with my other K&K equipped guitars run through the same system.

 

A bit unclear, but it seems that you have already installed a K&K in the 45......yes? If you have other K&K equipped instruments that are not boomy and don't tend to feedback I would first try to identify the differences there.........transducers installed properly? same gain levels? same speaker placement? same overall volume levels? same environment? I use a J-45 Vintage (which is what yours is if it has an adirondack top) equipped with a K&K, no sound hole cover and no feedback. Same setup in my J-35 sitka-topped guitar. There is some "boomy" body noise that all soundboard transducers are subject to and I fix that with this:

 

Z4SDZYE.jpg

 

I use the Red Eye for impedance matching - any PA system or amp sees the same thing out of my guitar, a plus when visiting open mic stages with varying sound systems. A good compressor properly adjusted is a very good enhancer. It squashes loud transients, controls extraneous body noise generated by just handling the guitar and smoothes everything very nicely. I use the Wampler shown here.......others I have tried (Keeley 4-Knob specifically) roll off a lot of low end frequencies and kind of rob a J-45 of its' "thump". The Wampler is quite transparent in this regard. The BLEND control allows me to mix dry and compressed signal, making it even more transparent in the signal chain. Overall a compressor kind of consolidates an instruments' sound and is very effective for live use.

 

But as I said, I would first determine that there is nothing wonky with the K&K install in the J-45.......a little odd that it alone would have problems the others do not, all other things being equal.

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I have a J50 with a K&K mini. I either run it through a Red Eye Fire Eye into a Bose stick, which sounded great and was simple, but more recently as I have started gigging with a few guitars with different pickups, I tried to set up a pedal which I could use for all of them (with tweaking of course). This is my pedal:

 

I1WxVy4l.jpg?1

 

 

 

Note that the first pedal is a Boss TU3-W (it has that ohm match that K&K's like - as does the K&K preamp, the orchid muting DI, and the Fire Eye). Next is a decent EQ pedal - the Boss Ge7. For the K&K on my J50, i end up sweeping down the mids on the Ge7.

 

 

The other pickup that I really like... is the one that comes standard with the new J45s - the Baggs Element VTC. You can dial down the bass, and the UST is soft and does not sound quacky at all in my opinion. As a matter of fact, I bought one forum member's J45 with this Element VTC, and it sounds great. My gigging buddy is still using it on a long-term-borrow at the moment. He likes the sound so much he put an Element VTC into his Martin D41.

 

Anyways - I am a K&K guy. They do sound best when they go through that whole matched OHM impedance thing, which I wont pretend I understand.

 

I’m with Sal. I play the J-50 Frankenstein with a K&K through the Red Eye. The guitar can sound a bit boomy depending on the system supplied by the venue. Then I tweak the treble control on the Red Eye almost all the way up and the boom goes away and the tone is really close to the “snap” I hear from the aged Sitka when playing unplugged. YMMV of course.

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I am a big fan of the Trance Amulet lens pickups - stereo - exceptionally nice - and the Mono system. Plug n play. They beat the heck out of the K&K in my J 50, soon to be changed out. I have a Lyric in a J45 right now, you want boom and feedback? In spades. With the Trance I don't have to use any sort of DI, box, or anything. If one put pencil to paper I would bet the cost of the Trance isn't any higher than the cost of the K&K plus pre-amp/DI/ whatever. And I have yet to run into a house system where the Trance didn't sound terrific.

http://tranceaudio.com/amuletm.html

Here's the stereo I had in a JB, first day, just quick plugged it in at a local music store, and was blown away by the natural sound thru a rather simple Yamaha PA. No putzing - just plug and play with eq flat.

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I am a big fan of the Trance Amulet lens pickups - stereo - exceptionally nice - and the Mono system. Plug n play. They beat the heck out of the K&K in my J 50, soon to be changed out. I have a Lyric in a J45 right now, you want boom and feedback? In spades. With the Trance I don't have to use any sort of DI, box, or anything. If one put pencil to paper I would bet the cost of the Trance isn't any higher than the cost of the K&K plus pre-amp/DI/ whatever. And I have yet to run into a house system where the Trance didn't sound terrific.

http://tranceaudio.com/amuletm.html

Here's the stereo I had in a JB, first day, just quick plugged it in at a local music store, and was blown away by the natural sound thru a rather simple Yamaha PA. No putzing - just plug and play with eq flat.

 

Dan that hypnotic dropped D journey always floors me. That Trance does sound great....

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Thanks all.

 

Yes I replaced the M1A with the K&K. The K&K was installed by the same luthier who put them in my other guitars. I always bring a back up guitar to a gig in case I have problems. At a gig last weekend, I had a lot of feedback problems in a noisy pub where the sound needed to be fairly loud. I switched the lead from the J-45 to another K&K equipped guitar - all settings on the preamp, mixer, and speakers were not changed. Feedback immediately stopped. I was using the Redeye preamp so the impudence shouldn't have been a problem as far as I know?

 

I think the Trance Amulet looks brilliant but may possibly be out of my price range, and I don't see them for sale anywhere online here in the UK. I will still check them out because they are very interesting and the sound from that video is really nice. The Baggs Element VTC looks more affordable, nice to know things have progressed over the years! The different pedals look very useful too but as a full-time working musician, you can probably guess that my budget is pretty limited and I'm not sure where to start. Maybe one the compression pedals...? My only concern would be if it didn't do the trick and I had no money left to try something else. I never had problems with the M1A and was seriously thinking I should just get another and be done with it but am convinced a more natural sound is out there. Thank you again for the advice.

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Thanks all.

 

Yes I replaced the M1A with the K&K. The K&K was installed by the same luthier who put them in my other guitars. I always bring a back up guitar to a gig in case I have problems. At a gig last weekend, I had a lot of feedback problems in a noisy pub where the sound needed to be fairly loud. I switched the lead from the J-45 to another K&K equipped guitar - all settings on the preamp, mixer, and speakers were not changed. Feedback immediately stopped. I was using the Redeye preamp so the impudence shouldn't have been a problem as far as I know?

 

 

 

Strange that this is happening. Buc may have a point in that the installation may be slightly off in the J-45. Not casting aspersions on your luthier. He/she may have nailed it on your other guitars and didn’t quite get it right on the 45. It is worth a look. It happens.

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I finally got my long-awaited sunburst J-45 a few months back. It has an Adirondack top and is absolutely lovely, very dry and resonant!

 

I originally had a Baggs M1A soundhole pickup in it and that was ok. I got to thinking a K&K would be better as that's what my other guitars have and I have been very happy with the live sound. I've run the J-45 through a few different preamps and twiddled with the mixer but I can't seem to completely get rid of the boomy bass and overall muddiness. Even with a soundhole plug I still have a problem with feedback. I have no feedback/muddy/boomy issues with my other K&K equipped guitars run through the same system. The J-45 is the most comfortable to play, suits my style the best, and I'd like to use it pretty much exclusively if I can.

 

I am ready to accept that this is not the right pickup for this particular guitar and wondering what else you all would suggest. I don't want anything with a microphone in it, just for simplicity's sake. Unless I am playing at a large venue or festival, I sort out my own sound and while I have a good understanding of the basics, I am not a soundman. I am very tempted to just go back to a Baggs M1A as when I ran it through a RedEye or Headway preamp, the sound was fairly nice without the usual mag electric vibe. I haven't used an undersaddle pickup in years so not sure what they would be like through a good preamp, they have probably come a long way since the quackiness of the 1990's!

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

 

It isn't working properly. You need to take it back to where you had it installed. It is probably faulty. If they are trustworthy, they will check it for the feedback problem. Otherwise.....start again.

 

While I am at it......

Earlier this year I bought my beloved Tonedexter. It is a preamp/DI that you run your guitar with undersaddle pickup or K&K pickup to while also running a mic to it. Tonedexter analyses the pickup and makes a wavefile to save that will make the pickup sound more like it is your guitar being mic'd up.

 

The Aura system is similar, except it has a gallery of common acoustic guitars that you download. But if you have a strange guitar, you can now make wavefiles of it in Tonedexter.

 

Tonedexter AND Aura can be run to a recording with up to 100% of the sound, but in a live gig situation the same problems that make using a mic annoying also occur. So it is best to have a simple pickup in the guitar like the K&K or my Martin Thinline passive undersaddle running on just a small amount of sound image - just enough to get rid of the dreadful piezo QUACK.

 

 

I have a 1959 Gibson LG3 with the Thinline pickup and I could never get the sound I want from playing straight in to amp or mixer. Aura is no good because the Aura Gallery has no LG3. So Tonedextering is the way - I made a wavefile and while I have in the past recorded with it on 100%, here is a little track I just recorded a minute ago with about 20%...just on, really (capo - 3rd fret - why it is called Capo 3 - 7B):

 

 

https://soundcloud.com/bk7-3/capo37b

 

 

 

BluesKing777.

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Did you install a K & K with the preamp?

 

No, it's just the standard K&K mini. I will take it to the luthier and have him check it out.

 

Thanks for all your input, it's great to know that these pickups do work with bass heavy guitars.

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It sounds to me that the K&K isn’t installed correctly. I’ve got one in my ‘67 J45 and another in my Hummingbird 12 string. Both sound wonderful, as did the one in my old D18. I know they’re super fussy with positioning of the piezo discs though, so I’d definitely get it looked into. There was a jig that K&K recommended using for installation which could be cut fro cardboard and secured using bridge pins as I recall...could be worth using as a reference for your luthier. Good luck!

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No, it's just the standard K&K mini. I will take it to the luthier and have him check it out.

 

Thanks for all your input, it's great to know that these pickups do work with bass heavy guitars.

You can buy the preamp seperate and install with the mini you've already had installed. Probably your least expensive option before you decide to switch to another pickup. I've had LR Baggs and Fishman both and IMHO the K&K is the best. Good luck and play hard!

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Agree! Trance is the way to go.

 

I am a big fan of the Trance Amulet lens pickups - stereo - exceptionally nice - and the Mono system. Plug n play. They beat the heck out of the K&K in my J 50, soon to be changed out. I have a Lyric in a J45 right now, you want boom and feedback? In spades. With the Trance I don't have to use any sort of DI, box, or anything. If one put pencil to paper I would bet the cost of the Trance isn't any higher than the cost of the K&K plus pre-amp/DI/ whatever. And I have yet to run into a house system where the Trance didn't sound terrific.

http://tranceaudio.com/amuletm.html

Here's the stereo I had in a JB, first day, just quick plugged it in at a local music store, and was blown away by the natural sound thru a rather simple Yamaha PA. No putzing - just plug and play with eq flat.

 

 

 

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