My daily mindshare is deeply invested in acoustic pickups and I'm happy to answer any questions. The guy who does
https://hazeguitars.com/ has a lot of great explanations of all the pickups if you google for something, fantastic graphics etc. (example: takamine palathetic
https://hazeguitars.com/blog/meet-the-t ... q=takamine)
penningtron wrote:
None of them are that good...
^ I agree with this if our metric for goodness is "Sounds like what I hear my guitar sounding like". Which is funny because electric guitars generally don't have that same restriction, but we've obviously moved far passed that early on.
With that out of the way, no real acoustic pickup system is going to nail %100 what you hear, so everything is a compromise with how practical it is versus how it sounds.
why some people might prefer one pickup over the other generally comes down to playing style, venue, etc. Often broken up into extremes of “do you play mostly big chords? Fingers/Picks, or are you playing finger style or a lot of leads”, and “Do you play by yourself in your basement, or on a big stage with a whole band”
Most acoustic guitar amplification can be broken down into a few categories, or combinations there-of.
- Microphone outside of the guitar (Generally the best, least controllable/repeatable from a practical sense)
- Microphone inside of the guitar, (usually a condensor, often on a gooseneck)
- Piezo-electric pickup on the underside of the top (whether on the bridge plate or ortherwise). Often called a "Top Sensor".
Top sensors can sound quite good but can pick up a lot of extra sounds, or sound washy/phasey
- Piezo sensor under the saddle, often called an "Under the saddle pickup" or transducer (often associated with the squawky sound of the 90s)
- Piezo sensor inside the saddle,
- in Taylor’s case, they (currently) have a pickup on the side of the saddle, going through the top so it picks up both. Good or bad
Saddle sensors can sound good but can mask the character of the guitar and sound a bit more ‘electric’.
- Magnetic pickup in the soundhole (same concept as an electric, just usually not trying to be super high impedance)
The LR Baggs anthem is a combination of a microphone and an under the saddle element (called “Element”, ha) with a blend control to give you options, especially if you play a variety of stuff (ie: less microphone might be better if you’re playing with a band vs by yourself)
penningtron wrote:
... but L.R. Baggs' seem to be the best.
LR Baggs indeed makes good pickups, as does Fishman although they often get labeled with the sound of their past. I recently tried out some new Fishman modelling options that might just get us to the point where you have a good microphone sound out of your guitar, without the impracticality of mic’ing something up on a stage.
There are more options than that, and a lot of people that give you 2 or more options to blend together. Then there's the pre-amp side, that because so much of this is piezo-electric based, there's often a preamp inside the guitar to get you to line level with an output impedance more suited to standard audio equipment inputs. Not every guitar mounted preamp 'sounds' great, or gives you the options you want. Taylor's preamp at it's core was effectively designed by Rupert Neve, and I get to say occasionally, "What was Rupert thinking"
