So I play in an experimental metal band, and I thought that some of our more country/southern sounding songs could really benefit from the thump of an acoustic bass. However, on some of our others songs, I need to be able to play with distortion, and I heard that the piezo pickups on acoustic basses don't handle distortion very well. I thought - would it be possible to install a magnetic pickup on an acoustic bass, and have some sort of killswitch to switch between it and piezo?
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Ive seen something like this before but not for Metal...
I saw a bass player playing countryish/Jimmy buffet style covers/originals using a single Jazz Pickup mounted on an odd looking (plastic?) block clamped to the middle of the AEB soundhole. It sounded ok but maybe his EQ was a bit off as it was "grindy". It cut through his bands' mix with no low end frequencies.
Ive had no luck getting my AEB to sound good amplified. It wants to distort under higher volumes, I suppose thats a Piezo pickups' issue.
I saw a bass player playing countryish/Jimmy buffet style covers/originals using a single Jazz Pickup mounted on an odd looking (plastic?) block clamped to the middle of the AEB soundhole. It sounded ok but maybe his EQ was a bit off as it was "grindy". It cut through his bands' mix with no low end frequencies.
Ive had no luck getting my AEB to sound good amplified. It wants to distort under higher volumes, I suppose thats a Piezo pickups' issue.
I think that you'll run into issues of feedback using distortion on an acoustic bass. This won't work live obviously, but on recordings you can add distortion in the post processing.
Lace makes a thin bass pickup you could place anywhere under the strings. Yes, you'll get feedback with enough volume and gain. Me, I like a little of it here and there. You can stuff the body with open cell foam to keep it at bay, stop stuffing when it's where you like it.
You'll have some difficulty with amplifying it without feedback, there's a reason the solid body electric bass was invented, you will be able to amplify it more with a magnetic pickup, but then you lose alot of the acousticness. If you keep monitor volume and stage volume down you'll have better luck.
It sounds like you want an Epiphone Jack Casady sig, which is a kind of hybrid between a true hollowbody and a semi-hollowbody. Between the tone knob and the three-setting "vari-tone" switch you can get a very acoustic-y thump out of it for your country-ish material; at other settings you can get something more P-bass-ish, or semi-hollowish, which would probably be great for a lot of your other material. Unlike most acoustic bass guitars, the design makes it surprisingly resistant to feedback, even when playing at loud volumes.
