Tweet
Hi everyone from New Zealand.
I've been around from time to time as a contributor on the amp forum, but not in the pickups section. I'd like to ask for some advice here...
I have a quite nice asian-made mandolin; arch-top, oval-hole. The acoustic sound is waking up nicely and it plays well after I've levelled the frets and tweaked the nut and bridge positions. It's good enough to gig with.
I'd like to make a magnetic pickup for this instrument -
I know I can get piezo bridges and various kinds of piezo pickups, but in this case I want a mag pickup sound, and I'd also be grateful for its trouble-free performance in small venues with poor on-stage acoustics.
I can get away with obscuring _a little_ of the soundhole, because the acoustic air resonance is set a little too high at the moment. But something the width of a strat pickup coil would plug too much of the hole and tune it too low. So my first guess is that I'll need to make either a much slimmer strat-type s/coil pickup which can sit _in_ the soundhole.... or a much shallower De-Armond type which will fit under the strings _beside_ the soundhole.
I am also dealing with two steel string pairs and two bronze-would pairs - and I want to keep that combination for its acoustic sound - so I thought perhaps two separate small coils, with different magnets and/or different numbers of turns. Or perhaps the De-Armond trick of winding some turns around two magnet poles and then inserting the other two poles and winding on the rest of the turns.
Before I try to reinvent the wheel.....Has anyone been down this road before?
Best regards, Simcha.
I've been around from time to time as a contributor on the amp forum, but not in the pickups section. I'd like to ask for some advice here...
I have a quite nice asian-made mandolin; arch-top, oval-hole. The acoustic sound is waking up nicely and it plays well after I've levelled the frets and tweaked the nut and bridge positions. It's good enough to gig with.
I'd like to make a magnetic pickup for this instrument -
I know I can get piezo bridges and various kinds of piezo pickups, but in this case I want a mag pickup sound, and I'd also be grateful for its trouble-free performance in small venues with poor on-stage acoustics.
I can get away with obscuring _a little_ of the soundhole, because the acoustic air resonance is set a little too high at the moment. But something the width of a strat pickup coil would plug too much of the hole and tune it too low. So my first guess is that I'll need to make either a much slimmer strat-type s/coil pickup which can sit _in_ the soundhole.... or a much shallower De-Armond type which will fit under the strings _beside_ the soundhole.
I am also dealing with two steel string pairs and two bronze-would pairs - and I want to keep that combination for its acoustic sound - so I thought perhaps two separate small coils, with different magnets and/or different numbers of turns. Or perhaps the De-Armond trick of winding some turns around two magnet poles and then inserting the other two poles and winding on the rest of the turns.
Before I try to reinvent the wheel.....Has anyone been down this road before?
Best regards, Simcha.
Comment