Official Luthiers Forum!

Please feel free to add your tips for installing various pick-ups in acoustic guitars to this thread so that it's useful to others in the future? Thanks and here's some of mine:

We install a lot of pick-ups but don't and won't sell them. So our clients source on their own and then bring us the pick-up and instrument.

For K&K pure Western/Mini: This is an excellent pup at a VERY attractive price point for a quality product. Does great with flat pickers and more.

Check first but for many body styles you can knot the pup lead out of the input jack and take up the slack effectively suspending the wires in the air in the box of the guitar. No rattling or banging around this way. Check first not all larger bodies need the knot.

Feel the bridge plate and make sure there is enough real estate for the three transducers to still be on the plate once glued. Some bridge plates are pretty small.

We glue transducers with medium CA. After checking out the bridge plate and making sure it's flat and doesn't have any splintering wood spray CA accelerator on a paper towel and wipe the plate.

Then one by one install your transducers with a very small drop of medium CA that flashes off faster because of the accelerator on the bridge plate.

Contrary to manufacturers notes placement is not hyper-critical and I eye-ball mine even though Dave made a tool that spaces them the same on all three positions.

Baggs Anthem and Lyric:

Great pups and the Anthem is my gold standard for a great sounding finger style or flat picking guitars.

For the UST (under saddle transducer) drill a recess in the end of the saddle slot to tuck the tip. The tip is not active and needs to be out of the way so that the high E has active transducer under it. I drill my recess at approx. 30 degrees downward from the top's plane.

Be sure your saddle slot is level and be sure your saddle bottom is also level. I mark my saddle slots with pencil and then sand them on a surface plate until the pencil is gone.

A saddle in a UST equipped guitar should not bind. It should not rock either so carefully sand your saddle sides until you can insert it and remove it with just finger pressure but it's also not loose or capable of rocking.

Plug in all your connections to the control box PRIOR to mounting the control box it's WAY easier.... My life changed for the better when I learned this....

I trial fit the control box and then mark one side with masking tape on the guitar top for fast replacement when I'm ready.

Generic PUP install tips:

I'm a fan of placing the battery bag next to the neck block on the upper side of the guitar for the right or left handed player. The idea is the bag is velcrowed to the side where it intersects the neck block but also resting on the side of the neck block. This is a different side of the block for a left or right handed player. Often gravity over time pulls bags off the velcro. In my experience when the bag's weight is resting on the block this doesn't happen any more.

See Dave Collin's video on PUP installs specifically the jack hole and why 1/2" is NOT your friend.

Here’s a “dont”: please don’t attach the battery bag to the front of the neck block on a bolt neck guitar. Yes, it’s easy to reach there. But I had two Taylors in a row this year where this had been done, in both cases I needed to get the neck off but the bag was stuck on top of the bolt heads. Just adds a little time/expense for the owner.

You can buy or make jack fishing tools to shove in through your newly reamed endpin hole and pull the jack back through but if you’d like to avoid having yet another single purpose gizmo cluttering the shop..

The test amp that sits under my bench has a guitar cable permanently plugged into it, obviously. I use the cheapest, generic unbranded cables because they have ends like these:


A few twists unscrews the sheath that covers the actual solder joins on these. Slide that out of the way and now the whole cable head fits through the slightly-smaller-than 1/2” hole you just reamed. Reach in the soundhole and grab it, attach your endpin jack, yank the cord to pull it back through the hole AND since you’re already plugged in to your amp you might as well tap on the saddle to verify you’re getting a nice strong signal. Heck, for extra style points do it with the strings already installed and bust straight into the lick from Green River.

Just got back from work in Ann Arbor I had two to do for tomorrow morning so I drove in in a snow storm.

This Martin CEO-9 now has a Baggs Anthem and I took some pics of the slight pocket that we drill in the end of the saddle slot for the black colored UST end that is not active. Again the point is tucking the inactive part of the transducer into the corner of the slot so that the high e has active UST under it.

To expand on why we ensure that the saddle slot is level and the saddle is level is as a hedge against poor balance issues and also again the saddle should be free to move but not loose or capable of rocking in the slot.

Agreed and thanks for that Josh. I'll add that the presence of the bolts on the block make for a poor bond of the part to the velcro that sticks to the guitar AND the bag and battery is now working against gravity in the playing or display positions and these always come loose.

I always clean wherever I am sticking an adhesive with naphtha first and then let it dry completely. Kind of hard to do with bolts in the way.

Josh's tip about using the cable is great I had not considered that, thanks Josh!

I use a 1/4" wooden dowel about 15" long to feed the jack into the jack hole but I like the cable better and will try it.

I have noticed that the inside edge of the X brace can be quite close to the end of the saddle slot in some guitars Hesh.

Ever seen someone drill that angled hole into the X?

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

Yep it can be Terry and we've noticed that too and have seen one that someone drilled though the X-brace leg likely unintentionally. I always check before drilling because I like to drill at an angle so the UST is not bent at 90 degrees. Sometimes though there is no room.