home made pick up

pdmackie · #1 02-08-2005, 06:05 PM

I play bass in a bluegras band and i've always had problems wiht pick ups.
i've used a shadow and a fishman and i've tried them on the bridge and various places on the body but they have never been satisfactory and after about 4 years the fishman pickups have detached from the metl contact plate.

our banjo player has suggested a pudding - a speaker wedged under th the tailpiece. he made one for me from a cheap oval speaker and a transformer (total cost £8). i tried it last night for the first time and it produced a more natural and better balanced sound than i ever achieved with the fishman.

has anyone used this method and if so is there any benefit in using better materials i.e. a decent speaker

anonymous0726 · #2 02-08-2005, 06:11 PM

D'Armond (and old Toledo, OH company) made a pickup quite similar to this in the '50's. I had a chance to play a bass with one of these on it, and it didn't sound half-bad. It did tend to want to feed back, though.

Jazzman · #3 02-08-2005, 08:21 PM

That isn't a pickup, it is a microphone.

anonymous0726 · #4 02-08-2005, 08:35 PM

Would you settle for 'contact mic'? I think the Schertler is a similar idea on a micro-scale, no?

anonymous0726 · #5 02-09-2005, 02:26 PM

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...781704182&rd=1

An ad for the pickup I mentioned above.

JonB · #6 02-09-2005, 02:56 PM

Dean Markley makes a contact mic I think they call an "accelerometer" or something that attaches to the instrument with putty. I paid about $45 for one new and it works as advertised - good natural sound. Never was able to get it to work well live, though.