My homemade 5-str EUB, lets here your input.

[paintandsk8]

Hey toonman, I was wondering if you had any trouble with dissasembling and mounting the K&K preamp & how big of a cavity it takes to internally mount it? I'm thinking of doing this on my next EUB, but i'm concerned since my bodies are so much narrower than yours. BTW, It LOOKS great, but we all want to know how it SOUNDS!! You should definetly make us some mp3's if you have the means.

[toonman]

I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to record/send a sound file. I'll try that today. as far as internally mounting the K&K pickup and preamp, that was pretty tough. I still dont have it exactly the way I would like it. First I bought two 10k and two 100k pots and replaced the cheap plastic pots K&K puts in the preamp. I had to attach them with small wires about 3" long which was a pain. It took up alot of room too, Figure about 1" per pot all in a row. The circuit board inside the preamp is the same size as the preamp itself. (2" X 2.5") I made the hole for the electronics about 1 1/4" deep to allow room for the new pots and circuit board and all the wires. The output jack had to come off and have wires run to it so I could mount it in the cover plate, be careful not to strip out the jack by tightening it too much. K&K products sound good but they use cheap parts. And for the input jack, I removed it completely and ran the K&K pickup wires through the body into the cavity I carved out and just soldered the wires where they should go on the circuit board. The only problem I had was finding a way to secure everything in place. The cover plate is the only thing holding everything in place. every thing fits pretty snug. When you take the cover plate off everything comes with it though. Another drawback is that the K&K pickup is glued to the side of the bridge near the bottom and wedged between the bridge and the body when in place. It can not be removed without desoldering the wires from the circuit board. Since the strings are fed through the front of the body under the bridge, I made sure to leave enough slack in the pickup wires to be able to raise or remove the bridge so I can change the strings if needed. I cut out a small groove on both the bottom and the bottom side of the bridge to allow the pickup wires to be fed under and up to the bottom side of the bridge. It wasn't too hard to do, Just time consuming figureing out where you want everything to go.

I dont know If I have the time to start producing these. I would love to though. I put alot of time into it and thats what everyone would be paying for. Price would probably be between $1800.00 - $2000 for one.

[paintandsk8]

thanks for the info, Maybe I'll just stick with the fishman powerjack ...