I have a Dean 5-string acoustic bass and the saddle pickup, well, sucked. I tried a pre-amp and even that wasn't enough to get some volume out of it. Without the ore-amp I had to crank my amp to max to hear anything, and with the pre-amp I had volume from the G and D strings and the output fell off for the rest of the strings.
I started looking at a way to upgrade the pickup and came across the K&K pickups. Looked good and was going to get them. Then I heard about an alternative that was less expensive and seemed to have good reviews. The alternative was from
http://www.jjb-electronics.com/. I emailed Jessie and had a bunch of questions for him. All my questions got answered quickly.
I wanted to keep my onboard controls and asked if he could make it work. He said no problem. He wired the 3 transducers ( cause it's a 5-string acoustic), into a 2.5mm jack since that is how the saddle pickup was connected.
This was on a weekend I got a hold of him and by Monday it was shipped to me. Since I was in Canada it took a bit longer to get to me. He recommended using the gel super glue to instal them and I'm glad I did it that way.
Now comes the moment of truth. Plugged it in and all I can say is WOW. It's as loud as my electric basses, no real need for the ore-amp, but I may still go through the pre-amp, and I still have the use of my on-board controls.
Couldn't be any happier with this upgrade. The price was way cheaper than the K&K and the quality of the job Jessie did was perfect, especially trying to solder 3 transducers onto a single 2.5mm plug.
Anyone looking for an upgrade should check out the link I posted above. I'm glad I did.
