Sound hole pickups?

BeardyAndy

Is it sound hole or soundhole?

I've got a Tanglewood TW15 that doesn't owe me very much and plays very nicely but it's fully acoustic and I'd like to be able to record with it without all the hassle of mic's etc..

What should I be spending to get something worth owning but isn't twice the value of the guitar?

Winny_Pooh

Mics are a hassle? What's a hassle is deciding not to use a mic and then in the mixing stage trying to get an acoustic pickup to sound good.

If you want vaguely recording quality then a seymour duncan magmic....but it costs more than your guitar.

Buy an audix i5 and put it on a stand. 

Gandalph

You might be able to pick up (no pun intended) an LR Baggs M1A for around £100 that would do the job well. 

Not sure what your guitars worth, you could get a used Seymour Duncan Woody for a fair bit less. Quick look shows one on ebay now for £40. I've never used one though and they don't get great reviews, some out there do rate them though. 

Good luck!

BeardyAndy

Winny_Pooh said:

Mics are a hassle? What's a hassle is deciding not to use a mic and then in the mixing stage trying to get an acoustic pickup to sound good.

If you want vaguely recording quality then a seymour duncan magmic....but it costs more than your guitar.

Buy an audix i5 and put it on a stand. 

I'll only be recording for shits and giggles, my "studio" is an iMac on the dining table while my daughter fires questions at me so yes, a mic is hassle. I've got an SM57 collecting dust somewhere.

bugileman

I think it's irrelevant what the guitars worth, I know that particular model and yes they sound very good. It's probably one of the best models they did. So even if the mic/pre amp costs a bit it would be well worth it. 

BeardyAndy

@bugileman Thanks. I don't mind spending a bit on one, I'm just aware that in the electric guitar pickup world there's often not a huge difference between a £50 pick up and a £200 pick up...

I've a guitar with a SD Antiquity in it and it sounds lovely but not necessarily £150 better than the Tonerider I have in another.

Lewy

BeardyAndy said:

I've a guitar with a SD Antiquity in it and it sounds lovely but not necessarily £150 better than the Tonerider I have in another.

Without wishing to labour the point others have made, if you don't to use a mic to record your acoustic, you may as well use your electric guitar with an acoustic IR in your recording software. It will sound better than a DI'd soundhole pickup.

BeardyAndy

@Lewy Didn't know that was an option, I'll check acoustic IRs out then. Thanks

TheMadMick

If you want to try a soundhole pickup, I have a Fishman humbucker I bought for a project that didn't happen. You could try it and maybe, if you like it, we can come to some arrangement?

Lestratcaster

To be fair I've used a good ol' SM57 in front of my acoustics a few times and its quite good. Not as good and detailed as a condenser but does the job with minimum fuss.

The iRig acoustic stage isn't overly expensive and sounds quite good, easy to use as well.

BeardyAndy

TheMadMick said:

If you want to try a soundhole pickup, I have a Fishman humbucker I bought for a project that didn't happen. You could try it and maybe, if you like it, we can come to some arrangement?

Thanks @TheMadMick but I think I'll try the acoustic IR route first, I'm very much an analogue man with half a toe dipped in the digital world!

Lewy

BeardyAndy said:

@Lewy Didn't know that was an option, I'll check acoustic IRs out then. Thanks

There are some free Acoustic guitar IRs that are quite good I think. I think @timmyo has experimented in this regard?

TheMadMick

BeardyAndy said:

TheMadMick said:

If you want to try a soundhole pickup, I have a Fishman humbucker I bought for a project that didn't happen. You could try it and maybe, if you like it, we can come to some arrangement?

Thanks @TheMadMick but I think I'll try the acoustic IR route first, I'm very much an analogue man with half a toe dipped in the digital world!

No probz. Let me know if you change your mind.

Wistman

Most soundhole pickups sound pretty bad, something like a K&K Pure Mini is much better - fiddly install but fine if you go slow and follow the instructions.

However, for recording rather than live, a LDC like a second hand Rode NT1 or even AT2020 would be cheaper, easier and sound 10 times better...

Wistman

Lestratcaster said:

To be fair I've used a good ol' SM57 in front of my acoustics a few times and its quite good. Not as good and detailed as a condenser but does the job with minimum fuss.

An SM57 was the only mic used on Bon Iver’s debut album for everything - shows what you can achieve on a budget... and a reminder that in the end it’s the songs and performance which make or break it!

maltingsaudio

I would go down the woody route ( ooh er missus) I see a lot of them used by people playing blues who don’t necessarily want the full acoustic niceness. Let’s face it if your acoustic sounds like a bag of nails unplugged , it isn’t going to sound much better however much you spend on an acoustic pickup system. That said that might be the sound your after. 

From what @BeardyAndy has said he wants to do and his budget concerns , it would be an ideal starting point. Further on down the road then anything could happen . To those adamant a mic is the only way for him to go, did they read the bit “ I'll only be recording for shits and giggles, my "studio" is an iMac on the dining table while my daughter fires questions at me so yes, a mic is hassle. ”

BillDL

For your needs I would suggest a contact "mic", either internally mounted with double-sided adhesive tape or stuck to the top of the soundboard with less sticky adhesive where you can experiment with placement.  The Schaller Oyster (about £30 for the single and about £42 for the twin transducer) has remained almost unchanged for decades.  You have the option of reaming out the endpin hole and fitting a strap button/socket, or having a trailing lead with a 1/4" plug.  I have found that the Oyster, and a number of other similar contact transducers, generally produce a much more natural sound than under-saddle piezo strips or magnetic soundhole pickups but you have to experiment with placement. You can buy something as simple and cheap as the Harley Benton TrueTone T20 or TGI TGA1 that has a trailing cable and a jack socket that fixes to your bottom strap button for about £13. Artec, Dean Markley, Belcat, Shadow, and other recogniseable brands make contact transducers.  Kremona make some really good KNA contact transducers.  They are all passive and most of them produce enough signal whereby they don't usually need a preamp as long as you have some control over the bass and treble down the line.  They can be susceptible to feedback, but that wouldn't apply in your situation as you aren't sitting in a room with speakers moving the air.

The people at K&K must be laughing all the way to the bank.  Their K&K Pure Mini is nothing but 3 or 4 small diameter piezo-ceramic transducers commonly used as sounders/buzzers in cheap electronics circuits like toys and musical greeting cards (if you can still buy them).  The discs with wires already attached only cost about 2 quid each.  The wires are easily pulled off the discs, so K&K just encapsulate them in resin to prevent the wires being pulled off.  Yes, the rest of the wiring is still a bit fiddly and they probably use fine shielded cable, but that's all they comprise other than a standard guitar endpin jack socket.  I fitted these discs inside acoustic guitars with epoxy and fitted endpin sockets over 40 years ago, and all I needed was a Boss GE7 pedal to cut and boost some frequencies.

thomasw88

If you play in a band then a LR Baggs M80 or M1a are both excellent, sound great, and don't feedback easily.
  Takamine do/did a soundhole pickup that was the M1a  under a different badge, and might be able to get one secondhand cheaper than the LR Baggs M1a.

If you're gigging in a band then attempting to use a mic on a guitar is going to be very problematic.

If its' for recording at home then i'd get the best mic you can.

Lestratcaster

Wistman said:

Lestratcaster said:

To be fair I've used a good ol' SM57 in front of my acoustics a few times and its quite good. Not as good and detailed as a condenser but does the job with minimum fuss.

An SM57 was the only mic used on Bon Iver’s debut album for everything - shows what you can achieve on a budget... and a reminder that in the end it’s the songs and performance which make or break it!

There's a reason why every studio has one (or three) SM57's lying around. 

I do find I have to use a lot of preamp gain though with an acoustic and position it very close to the guitar.

chickenbonejohn

I like soundhole pickups, simple and foolproof -  yes, its not a true acoustic sound, but neither is a piezo pickup. https://www.chickenbonejohn.com/products/artec-memphisys-66-soundhole-humbucking-pickup?_pos=1&_sid=6161a64a5&_ss=r

chickenbonejohn

This is one of the first soundhole pickups, the DeArmond, and remarkably they still have a place, but these days people are asking crazy money for them. I  used this the other weekend for a gig, put through the PA.