pickup choice for steel resonator?

[djsbluesbar]

Hi out there, please help....I have 2 resonators, the ozark 3515e and the "vintage" brand amg1, my question is i want/ned to amplify the amg1, which (on a budget!) kind of pickup will work. the ozark has a lipstick style pickup which is ok, but can sound like a banjo when plugged straight int a p.a. I'v tried an underbridge piezo pickup robbed from a entry level acoustic on the vintage, I put it under the biscuit and it sounded pretty good, but did try it through my valve amp which makes many a guitar sound good. without making too many hole etc i'm thinking of using a passive underbridge piezo on my vintage and mounting it as i did, is this a bad idea? any better ideas? i know there are specialist pickups but all are out of my budget and i'm desperate to get out and gig the thing! mics arn't always an option either. help!

[snakehips]

Hi there !

I have 2 Fishman resophonic pickups to sell - one is the Passive, one is the active model.

If yo plan on mounting the jack socket on the f-hole hole then the Actice version will not fit as the preamp barrel is too long (more than the depths of a vintage/NRP reso guitar).

If you go for the passive model, you will need a pre-amp (perhaps you have one ?).

Piezo-type pickups like these will never sound great through an electric guitar amp ((they are not designed for this anyway). They are meant to be played through a clean amplified sound - like a PA system, keyboard amp or dedicated acoustic guitar amp.

I could sell the Passive version for £40, the active for £50 or both for £85 (will post for free within the UK). They sell, I think, for around £99 and £129 respectiveley brand new in the UK.

The Highlander pickup system is the best piezo type pickup available but is expensive and needs a pro-setup.

The Fishman Resophonic pickup is EASY to fit (in fact the easiest reso pickup to fit !!)

If you don't want to use a piezo type pickup, you could try a magnetic type pickup. The best by far is the one by Dave King.
See other threads on this site (do a search) for magnetic pickups / Dave King pickup -to find info and contact him for one.
I highly recommend them. I have tried a multitude of pickups for resos over the last 12 years and the Highlanders and Dave King's magnetic pickup are the best I have ever tried (in my personal opinion).

[djsbluesbar]

Thanks for the tips, I'l be in touch if i need the passive one, short of space too for the active.I have a mate who works in a music shop and we're gonna try a few from damaged guitars. My guitar amp is a peavey delta blues all valve, its quite well used as an acoustic/slide amp with its 15" speaker it keeps a true tone and the highs dont distort like on a solid state. besides the open mic nights i attend are all P.A. thanks again. is where i'm trying to fit it the best place? ie between the biscuit and cone or should it live like an acoustic, under the bridge
cheers dj

[snakehips]

Hi again !

Highlander put their piezo pickup in a channel routed out of the underside of the biscuit - just in from the outer edge - I think the outer edge of the inner cone well sits on the piezo pickup directly.
The piezo pickup only goes around half of the biscuit circle - the neck side half of the biscuit. I hope that makes sense.

Highlander have experimented (I expect a huge amount, with much input from Don Young of National Resophonic AND Bob Brozman) to get the best solution for a single cone pickup.
I'd go along that route.

As for playing through an electric amp - I did not mean you CAN'T play into one - I just meant that it doesn't give, to me, a pleasant sound - and wasn't designed for that really - however, whatever floats your boat !

Also, it depends what you are after - do you want to retain the acoustic tone of the reso - only louder ?
Perhaps you don't mind a more electric guitar sound ? Then a magnetic pickup would likely suit you better and will sound even better with a valve amp. PS. You will need nickel-wound strings (or DR Zebra strings as a good comprimise - I'm sure I have a thread somewhere about those strings) - unless you plan on getting a Dave King magnetis reso pickup (which is designed for using phosphor bronze strings).

[Gerry C]

My pal Dave Speight ( www.myspace.com/davespeight )has just acquired a Beltona electro resonator www.beltona.net/electro.htm which has a P90 magnetic and a piezo cone pickup wired in all manner of intriguing ways. It sounds pretty good unplugged but plugged in it is - he tells me - rather scary... Of course being made of glass fibre and resin and such it doesn't sound like a proper resophonic ;D

Cheerily,

Gerry C

[djsbluesbar]

Thanks again for your help on my quest for a pickup solution, the mounting on the underside of the biscuit makes sense, good on ya. confussed why i would need nickel strings, the piezo I'm thinking of using is a generic acoustic style pickup and i would have thought been intended for use with bronze? maybe I'm reading things wrong, can be such a non-tech airhead with all this! thanks again tho.....dj. I'l let you know if it works, shoul have a trial pick up by the weekend.

[Gerry C]

You'd only need nickel strings if you install a magnetic pickup. Under-cone and under-saddle pickups as described in this thread work fine with any kind of metal strings. However, most magnetics would only pick up (no pun intended) the vibrations of the strings' cores (which are usually steel) as distinct from the windings if the latter were bronze or phosphor bronze. At best you'd get a thin tone from the wound strings and relatively screaming volume from the top two. However, stick on an unwound third and you could be in business for all those mean Elmo' licks!

Cheerily,

Gerry C

[Michael Messer]

Hi DJsBluesbar,

Everyone has their own preference with this stufff....so here's mine.

Amplifying National style resophonic guitars with natural sounding pickups is not the easiest thing to achieve with or without a budget. Budgets aside, the Highlander system is by far the best product available and to my ears is the only one that gets close to the natural sound of the guitar when plugged in. The next one I would recommend is the Schatten pickup designed for single cone resophonic guitars. It is a lot cheaper than the Highlander and it does an excellent job. Next and much cheaper again, is the Amistar pickup. I haven't seen one for a long time, but they are okay for the price. After that you are in the land of fitting piezo pickups into the biscuit which has already been coverered.

Personally speaking; if I were in your position and wanted to amplify a single cone National style guitar through and amp which is not designed to amplify acoustic guitars, I would fit a magnetic pickup and use nickel strings. Acoustic pickups of any kind are designed to work with PA systems and acoustic amps (which are basically PA combos), not with electric guitar amps, valve or transistor. I am not a great fan of any DI acoustic pickup system. Although I do have Highlanders in all my guitars in case I need to plug in. I prefer a Shure SM57 mic to any acoustic pickup, but I do understand that you want to 'plug in and go'.

There are many threads on this forum discussing this subject. You should have a look through them.

Good luck & let us know how you get on.

Shine On,
Michael

[djsbluesbar]

Hi again, just continuing with my confusion! my ozark has a lipstick style pickup, should i be using nickel strings to get the best sound( ie electric strings)? I'm totally with you michael on the best result is acheived from a good mic, wouldn't dream of recording with anyting but! always use an EV nd up close and a sE mini condensor about 18" away. up until now I'v carried my own mic to open jams just to get over the PA guy looking lost and hasseled. Still want to champion my amp, please anyone try one if you get the chance, peavey delta blues, blonde on black as it has the 15" speaker, amazing acoustic sound, way better than any AER i'v tried. but i guess the beautiful thing about this fourm and all our passion for our music is that we all have a diferent ear for how we want to sound, and remember i'm trying to get the best sound out of a vintage brand resonator!
something to giggle at! me sitting in the corner of my friends shop not aware he's filming!! he owes me beer. thanks for reading my waffle, catch you all later dj

[Michael Messer]

Hi Dean,

If your guitar is fitted with a lipstick pickup, just fit some nickel (electric guitar) strings and plug into your Peavey Delta Blues amp. If you want to use a mic at jams you need a Shure SM57 and take off all reverb, set all EQ knobs at zero....and roll a little off the top and bottom ends. So instead of the graphic smiling... ......it should be frowning....>> ......this gives you a great sound, no feedback and lots of power.

The Peavey Delta Blues is a superb amp. I have only used it with electric guitars, but it is a great amp. There are some recordings on the mp3 page on my website which have my guitar through the Peavey Delta Blues. The two live recordings...Lucky Charms and Driving Wheel Blues feature that amp.

I checked out the You Tube film - your playing sounds great! Just keep doing it and you'll get there. Great stuff. Keep in touch.

Shine On,
Michael.

[djsbluesbar]

thanks for the advice on strings and pickups guys, think i'l persevere with taking a mic with me to gigs and open mic nights with my steel. off to try 13-54 nickel strings on my woodie with lipstick, thanks again and thanks, michael for the encouragement on my youtube effort, more can be found at showcaseyourmusic.com/djsbluesbar
bye for now
dj

[tark]

To clarify the 'which strings with a magnetic pickup' question -

Magnetic pickups originated with electric guitars (actually thats a bit of a daft thing to say. What I should have said was that electric guitar pickups began as a means to amplify the guitar. The combination of acoustic guitar plus pickup rapidly morphed into the electric guitar). They were only made possible by the invention of Alnico alloy in 1934. This made it possible to make strong enough magnets that were compact enough to make reasonably sized pickups. Before that magnetic guitar pickups had to use huge steel horseshoe magnets, as used in the famous Rickenbacher 'frying pan'. Even with the Alnico magnets, the output from the wound strings wasn't high enough, so the early electric guitars used nickel wound strings, nickel being a magnetic material.

So if you use anything resembling a conventional electric guitar magnetic pickup on an acoustic guitar you have to use 'electric' strings wound with nickel or steel to get the correct volume balance between the plain and wound strings.

However most acoustic guitarists prefer the tone of phosphor bronze wound strings. Since 1934 magnet technology has moved on and we now have very powerful, very small magnets. These magnets have made it possible to design and build 'acoustic' magnetic pickups (like the Fishman Rare Earth or the LR Baggs M1) that are balanced for use with phosphor bronze strings.

[snakehips]

Hi again !

Can I just reiterate that the Dave King magnetic pickup (a stacked humbucker) is made for use with phosphor bronze strings. The relative balance with the phosphor bronze bass strings is very good. Put nickel wound strings on and the bass strings are far too loud !!

[tark]

snakehips said:

Hi again !

Can I just reiterate that the Dave King magnetic pickup (a stacked humbucker) is made for use with phosphor bronze strings. The relative balance with the phosphor bronze bass strings is very good. Put nickel wound strings on and the bass strings are far too loud !!

Hi Snakehips,

Good point. Mr King seems a bit reticent about this pickup, there's nothing about it on the frets.co.uk site or on his own website. Lucky sod is obviously so busy he hasn't got time to sort out his websites!
You say it is a stacked humbucker. Is it still flat enough to surface mount on a resonator? I would have thought you would have trouble doing that with a stacked design.

More about string balance - many of the 'acoustic' magnetic pickups do not have adjustable pole pieces, so they have a fixed string to string balance for a typical phosphor bronze string set. They will also be balanced for lighter plain strings than are often used for slide, so if you use a fixed pole 'acoustic' magnetic pickup for slide the two plains might be too loud.

Pickups like the Sunrise, Shadow and the LR Baggs do have adjustable poles, so they can be used with a wider range of string types.

[snakehips]

Hi again !

Yes, Dave King is a very busy man building buitiful guitars and bringing back to life many guitars too. He has revived 6 Nationals for me - one even with a new neck.
Now he is also working with Ron Smith, as a National Resophonic dealer (plus other guitars).
With all the interest in resonator guitars these days, I'm sure he gets bombarded with phonecall/visit questions to his shop constantly. Email him with a simple request - exactly what you want - and I'm sure he will send you a pickup if you really want one. I'm sure he may chip in - in this forum - once in a blue moon to answer common questions.


And yes - it will fit under the strings of resonator guitars. I have them on my NRP Style 1.5 tricone, on a 1935 14 fret National Duolian and on my renecked baritone National Triolian.

I recommend the black one rather than the chrome/nickel one as it is a bit slimmer and camoflages in well beside an ebony fingerboard.

This pickup was designed specifically for National guitars and would have been designed with heavy guage strings (as per normal on a National) than the presumed (by Tark) light strings . I use 13-56 strings on all my Nationals and they sound well balanced when using the Dave King pickup.
I expect that should clear things up ?