Best Electro/Acoustic Pickup for EJ200

[Noel_G]

Hi all,

 

I am considering fitting a pickup to my standard EJ200 and was wondering if there were any opinions as to what the best ones were and ones to avoid!!

 

Thanks in advance

[diverden]

I have one of the earlier versions of the Epi AJ500 ME, fitted with the Baggs Element pickup with the volume control inside the sound hole.

This pickup is also used in several Gibson model acoustics. It's an excellent pickup and has yet to exhbit any of the problems players have

experienced with the Esonic 2 setup.

[GuitarLight]

I use Fishman Rare Earth sound hole pick up, and am very pleased with it.

[milod]

There's all sorts of stuff out there. I think over the past half century I've use a bunch of 'em.

 

Some of the magnetic soundhole pickups work well enough - even without sweating what strings you use. A friend has an old Gibbie that he just popped a soundhole pickup on, did nothing else, and it sounds fine. Some have volume and/or tone wheel controls as part of the bar across the soundhole.

 

There also are various undersaddle pickups that may or may not come with sufficient preamp to give you the kind of on-instrument control one usually expects on an electric.

 

I personally don't trust various sorts of internal microphonic sorts of stuff - but perhaps blame that on what I could get my hands on decades ago. Yet that's supposedly nowadays the high end. If you wanna pay more than you did for the guit, fine. I wouldn't, myself.

 

Regardless, my opinion is that with any good brand, you'll likely get something reliable IF it's installed well. That last is really the trick. It doesn't take much to screw stuff up.

 

I personally don't care much for endpin jacks - which is odd perhaps 'cuz I have four AEs with 'em.

 

My 12 has a mag pickup, no special controls and a somewhat extra braced jack on the down side of the endpin. Works fine, but I'm old and, other than falling down from being elderly <grin>, I'm not likely to jerk on the jack. Still, there's some extra wood and such to give it a bit more strength.

 

Oh the mag pickup on the 12 can sound pretty close to acoustic or pretty close to a Rick.

 

That last comment should ought to get you to consider that the amp and amp settings will be a huge part of translating an electric from any sort of pickup into sound.

 

m

[RaysEpiphone]

Martin Thinline is a usable one, I personalty don't like the hollow and thin sound a pick-up gives an acoustic guitar and I've found the pick-up's that have pre-amp control's are the worst sounding one's. If your going to go for a plug in your acoustic I'd say go for a strait wired one like this Martin (made by Fishman).

[Supersonic]

Judging by your user name, you need this:

 

http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-LRB-M1-LIST?SRC=D0301DT0HAMS0000&utm_source=shopping&utm_medium=feed&

 

[

 

Cheers

[milod]

I'm just going to add, again, my note that regardless, you're going to have a different sorta signal going to your amp and/or PA "in." That means more messing with the amp's controls than with an "electric" guitar. An archtop with a floating pickup ditto.

 

Also some amps/PA systems will color outgoing sound differently, again making your controls more important.

 

Nothing will give the sound you perceive from your acoustic guitar, even the most expensive microphones, by the time it's run through a replay with various speakers. Close, yes, but no cigar even with high priced stuff.

 

So... even as you don't really get your guitar sound lifting it to a voice mike in a bluegrass band or whatever, the object IMHO is to get a pleasing sound for an audience AND/OR have a signal that might record well on a given set of equipment.

 

As the old hermit martial arts master once said, "Anything can work, nothing always works."

 

m

[Jinder]

JJB Prestige 330. Great pickup (basically identical to the K&K Pure Mini but without the box and big-name branding). I had one in my Gibson AJ but moved it to another guitar as I wanted to try some different stuff out in the AJ. I will probably fit another in the AJ though as it is a superb pickup. Jesse Vallad at JJB offers some of the best customer service on the planet too.

 

Did I mention that the pickup is craaaazy cheap too?

 

I have no shares in JJB or anything, just keen to share info about good gear :-)

[RaysEpiphone]

Terms such as "transparent" are the thing's that give a true(er) original sound. An active system will almost alway's color any sound that passes thru it, in any of a mater of multilevel way's, there are exceptions, one being some solid state pre-amp's. It will depend on the brand, model and condition as to how "transparent" it will be. This is why a pre-amp with extra electronics's in it's chain will run a risk of coloring a signal. Although a tube pre-amp is going to drastically change the sound you get to transducer's many op-amp's will do the same and you can find op-amp's in a solid state circuit some time's so like I said, it just depends on how it was designed and what parts are in it.