Pickups for electric 12 string guitar?

[Marko Ursin]

I'm making an electric 12 string guitar (octave strings). I'd like to get as close as possible acoustic guitar-like sound. I know I can't get an acoustic-like sound out of a solidbody or even a hollowbody electric but something similar would be nice. There's no piezo saddle 12 string bridges (or at least I could not find any). What kind of pickup would give this kind of a sound? I suppose I can get some sound by placing a piezo wire under the bridge right? As for magnetic pickups what design should I look for? Singlecoil/humbucker, sidewinder, blade pickup or what? Any ideas? Pickup size or shape is not decided, nor is the number of pickups.
Marko

[soundguruman]

Piezo pickups give a more accurate sound, but are subject to resonant feedback and ringing.
This type is good for studio recording and low volume amplification.
For live sound, a parametric preamp with 2-3 frequency cut filters is usually used, to tune out the feedback.
Otherwise you get a lot of squealing, in a stage live sound environment. Depends on how loud the system is, what other stuff is on stage...
You have your basic Barcus Berry piezo, and your hot dot types...there are lots of them...
Martin Thinline 332 Acoustic Guitar Pickup | Musician's Friend


Magnetic pickup is better for live sound, but a lot of the true tone from the guitar is lost.
There is a lot less feedback, it's more plug and play, instead of messing with EQs and preamps.
Bartolini Pickups and Electronics |
The bartolini is one of the better magnetic ones.

tutorials for designs:
An Introduction to Scientific Guitar Design - Donald Brosnac - Google Books

So one or both has advantages and disadvantages...
The best sound for recording is generally a combo of piezo bridge pickup, and condenser microphones, mixed together.
But this is pretty useless in the average live sound system....because the average system has no parametric EQ to tune out resonant feedback.

Then you start to see that the preamp / amp is just as important as the pickup itself.
For live sound anyhow.
I like SWR California Blond amp. Fender Acoustasonic is pretty good too.

[big_teee]

Wouldn't some form of a blade pickup be ideal for a 12 String?
If you keep them on the low wound side they should have that Jangle of a 12?
T

[Marko Ursin]

Wouldn't some form of a blade pickup be ideal for a 12 String?
If you keep them on the low wound side they should have that Jangle of a 12?
T

That's what I think too. I may just make some sort of low wound blade pickup in Strat or P90 covers and listen how it works. If I used acoustic guitar style bridge undersaddle piezo would be pretty easy.

This type of bridge has some problems with intonation, at least at my skills level. That's why I'd like to use electric style bridge like this Gotoh.

I'm not sure if I can mount a piezo disc or wire under this bridge and get any sound out of it.

[soundguruman]

On the acoustic, the bridge is permanently installed according to skill of guitar builder.
If the intonation is off, the nut can be a factor also. (besides the builder being off)

A metal bridge would cause acoustic to not sound like acoustic anymore.
The tone would be severely altered.
But, there are obvious advantages to adjustable saddles, otherwise.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Look into the Highlander pickup kit. It fits under the saddle like a piezo but is different from those "matchstick" type piezos. Comes with an end pin jack that has preamp built into a cylinder that's attached to the "inside the guitar" end of the jack, and 9V battery clip. I've used these successfully on Taylor 12's as well as 6's and they sound a treat. Not clacky like typical piezos (+12 or more at 5KHz, OW!) You would have to shorten the height to keep your action in the same place, but same thing has to be done with piezo matchsticks. Also, no special pickup for 12's, the Highlander doesn't care how many strings your guitar has.

Fishman makes some nice magnetic pickups with built in preamps, that fit in the sound hole. Problem is, if you need to use a "hockey puck" rubber stopper in the soundhole to keep the guitar from feeding back at volume, you can't fit both. You can get a good sound from these for recording or live BUT in truth it does differ from what you get by using a quality microphone in the right position.

[Rick Turner]

I use D-TAR Timberline undersaddle pickups all the time in 12 strings with acoustic-type bridges. Of course, I helped to design the Timberline... The Wavelength is an easier install...flat cable... One of the big features that I insisted upon with D-TAR was to go to 18 volt preamps...with two AA cells and a voltage multiplier. Doubles the headroom, and you need it with piezos.

I have made duodecimal piezo pickups...yes, 12 individual string pickups...for 12 string guitars with the primaries sent to one stereo side and the secondaries to the other stereo side. Amazing sounds... Must do again! And yes, I compensated the intonation for them, too. That's a good eight hour pickup making burn on those...

[Rick Turner]

OH, piezos clacky? No. If that's your experience, then you're doing something very wrong.

That's;
a) bad pickup geometry

and/or

2) really bad impedance matching. You may need a load of as much as 100 meg Ohm for some designs. 10 meg is more common. Some can work with a 1 meg load. But if you're not getting good low end, then you simply have to raise the impedance load to lower the low end cutoff point.

Piezos properly done are pretty neutral and flat. They pickup exactly the events happening where they are located.

None of my customers ever complain about my piezo designs sounding clacky, and the pickups are known for their lack of "quack".

[Rick Turner]

And one more...

I designed the pickup side of the Highlander many years ago. Bob Wolstein did the preamp. We were partners in Highlander until I sold my share of the company. The current Highlander pickup element is the same one I designed for the D-TAR Timberline...

Yeah, been there, done that...still doing it.

[Marko Ursin]

Thanks for your replies. About magnetic pickups, what kind of a pickup would suit nicely to the 12 string guitar? Anyone made pickups for one and care to share experiences?

[Mike Sulzer]

Thanks for your replies. About magnetic pickups, what kind of a pickup would suit nicely to the 12 string guitar? Anyone made pickups for one and care to share experiences?

If you are interested in an acoustic sound, I would avoid the normal side by side humbucker, since the picking transients on the bass strings are attenuated. I think a medium impedance stacked humbucker blade design would be best (small neos between the two blades), with the voice of the instrument set by loading the pickups (C and R) by trial and error until you get the sound you like. (It is easier to change Cs, especially since you can set this up to do outside the instrument, than to wind many pickups.)

[tedmich]

looks pretty straightforward...


seriously though people have mentioned liking p90s, 'Tron Classics and SD Phat Cats

[David Schwab]

I'm making an electric 12 string guitar (octave strings). I'd like to get as close as possible acoustic guitar-like sound. I know I can't get an acoustic-like sound out of a solidbody or even a hollowbody electric but something similar would be nice. There's no piezo saddle 12 string bridges (or at least I could not find any). What kind of pickup would give this kind of a sound? I suppose I can get some sound by placing a piezo wire under the bridge right? As for magnetic pickups what design should I look for? Singlecoil/humbucker, sidewinder, blade pickup or what? Any ideas? Pickup size or shape is not decided, nor is the number of pickups.
Marko

You can absolutely get an acoustic sound if you have piezo saddle pickups and a convolution preamp.

I play in a band with a guy that has a Brian Moore iGuitar, and he gets a great acoustic tone out of it. He runs through a Yamaha acoustic preamp pedal.

[Rick Turner]

I can't help wondering what it is that you hope to get from a "12 string magnetic pickup" that you wouldn't get from any reasonable 6 string magnetic pickup. Is it a string spacing issue? Is it a particular sound? I just don't see what's different about a 12 string pickup than a 6 string pickup. You can get just about any voicing you want in what's available out there, so the only thing I can see being an issue at all might be string spacing...and in reality, pickups are no where near as sensitive on that level as they would appear to be. Yeah, nice to have all the magnets or polepieces line up perfectly, but it's not 100% necessary. And even so, it shouldn't be hard to get what you need. It's not even that big a deal to hand make flatwork for pickups to custom spacings.

[David Schwab]

I don't think he wants a 12-string pickup as much as a pickup for a 12-string guitar. So I imagine he wants something very clean and hi-fi.