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More Pickup Madness!


BluesKing777

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So I play the same tune by David Hamburger a number of times with different pickups....

 

 

 

 

Av6WGVRl.jpg

 

 

 

 

First up, my Waterloo WL-14X with my Baggs M1A fine tuned and run through Fishman Pro EQ to take the curly bits off. The Waterloo also has a K&K, so that is next. Then I mix both the M1A and the K&K together as a lot of people do

 

 

 

 

https://soundcloud.com/bk7-3/various-pickups7a

 

 

 

Next, the Waterloo with my new Dimarzio Black Angel through Sunrise buffer preamp and Fishman Pro EQ, then Dimarzio BA and K&K mixed together.

 

 

https://soundcloud.com/bk7-3/various-pickups7b

 

 

 

Then the Waterloo with my Sunrise pickup through Sunrise buffer preamp and Fishman Pro EQ, and then the Sunrise mixed with the K&K.

 

 

https://soundcloud.com/bk7-3/various-pickups7c

 

 

 

Then I grabbed my Black Maton and plugged direct to my mixer/record and played the same tune:

 

 

https://soundcloud.com/bk7-3/pickup-test-a-777

 

 

 

 

taTL95Gl.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

BluesKing777.

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I liked the 3rd set-up the best. The Sunrise stuff.

Nicely defined bass notes, and wide-warm (and almost stereo-like) finger picking tones.

 

The 2nd option was next best to my ears. Warmer than the very 1st set-up.

 

Tied at last place are the 1st set-up and the 4th.

Equally good, and perfectly fine, but not as good as the other choices.

 

Again, just my ears and my preference.

 

[tongue]

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I listened to all the samples on a fairly cheap soundbar located under my terminal. It beats a laptop speaker by a lot, but its not exactly the last word in fine audio reproduction.

Having said that I have 3 thoughts:

1 - I wish could get anything close to any of your sounds. It might help if I could play as well as you do, but that's a minor technicality.

2 - I can't tell the frickin difference between any of them. You have them all dialed in pretty well and its not like you are comparing a $1.99 pickup to a $200 pickup. They are all good quality pickups to start with.

3 - I suppose the moral of the story is that its much easier to get an equivalently "good" sound directly out of the Maton's electronics. No need for additional boxes.

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Great demos, the one takeaway from this for me is that the Sunrise, Baggs and DiMarzio are all high quality units which are absolutely pro level.

 

I've gone over almost entirely to mags now, I have the Sunrise in my Maple AJ, a Seymour Duncan MagMic in my '41 Reissue SJ100, a Rare Earth single coil in my J180 and a Rare Earth Blend in my Hummingbird. K&Ks remain in my Hummingbird 12 and '67 J45 and a Matrix Infinity in my SJ200.

 

Of the Mags, the Sunrise is the best, with the MagMic surprisingly close behind-an absolutely superb pickup. The Rare Earth single coil sounds fantastic but occasionally suffers from 60hz hum in venues with crappy lighting or earthing, which is a REAL shame as it's such a great plug-and-play tone. Most venues are fine though, and I may invest in an EHX Hum Debugger as an contingency for my board for times when the hum rears its head.

 

The Rare Earth Blend is good, but I haven't really zeroed in on how to get it to really sound great. I bought it used for a pittance as the previous owner had modified it to fit his guitar, and it needed some work and a new strapjack. It sounds good, but a little unbalanced-the unwound strings tend to pop out too much for my taste, and it's rather feedback prone with anything other than the smallest smidgen of mic blended in. I gather the later REB units have a high pass filter on the mic which deals with boxiness and feedback better, so maybe I'll try one of those. I may just fit another MagMic though as they're cheaper and I absolutely love the one in my SJ100.

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Yeah , but I was thinking you must have an endgame

 

 

No endgame, just like trying different pickups and recording, so posted the results for those that are interested here and on AGF....

 

 

Next, I will try my new Dimarzio Black Angel soundhole pickup in my Martin CEO-7, which has so far been pickup free. I am a bit disappointed in the Dimarzio for country blues picking - the bass just doesn't sound 'real', but when I was playing my old Lowden LSE1 in Open C tuning with lots of open string zinging ala John Butler's "Oceans", the pickup sounded really great.

 

 

Next, I intend to buy a Seymour Duncan Magmic to try. I will have to import it because they are totally out of stock here, and have been for a long time. Don't know why? No good?

 

 

BluesKing777.

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Well, the rotten Dimarzio Black Angel doesn't fit in the soundhole of my Martin CEO-7, short of using a hammer... [cursing]

 

There goes that plan.

 

Not to be put off, I grabbed my beautiful Martin OM18 Authentic, plugged in the Dimarzio and Sunrise preamp, plus Fishman Pro EQ and played for 10 mins or so, then peeled off my (loose, still learning it) fingerpicking guitar version of St Louis Blues:

 

 

https://soundcloud.com/bk7-3/st-louis-7

 

 

BluesKing777.

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