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A client has asked about installing a pickup in a guitar I am building and wonders about the acoustic impact. He has a B-Band system that includes an undersaddle as well as a soundboard transducer. The both seem very light in weight so I doubt there will much impact although weight may not be the only consideration. The system also includes a small circuit board and a volume/blend control. I am a dealer for K&K pickups but I think he favors the B-Band.
What are your thoughts about how this pickup may change the acoustic sound of an instrument if at all.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

I am personally not a big fan of placing anything underneath the saddle of the guitar adding any other surfaces that the vibration transfer will have to travel through.
I'm pretty new to guitar building, but I've used acoustics with electric pickups for 12 years and I have never been a big fan of the sound of any acoustic with this system, Both plugged and unplugged. It could be that I have just never played a great instrument with this system installed, but my feeling is that it does take away from the sound. I think any mass added with a pickup has little to do with the sound...unless its just really out of hand and gaudy.
This is why I just purchased the K & K trinity for my current project.
I'm sure the B-band sounds fine and it may not alter the sound at all, but like I said, I'm just not a big fan of adding anything under the saddle but the bridge.
Now, I may just get completely shot down, but that's my $.02.
-j.j.Brown38810.7577546296

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“If God dwells inside us like some people say, I sure hope He likes enchiladas, because that's what He's getting”
-jack handy

John, the B-Band is so thin and light that I don;t believe you would be able to tell any difference with or without it. It's a pretty nice pickup. I think soundboard transducer has more potential to mess things up that the undersaddle part does, but I'd just install the thing and let your customer decide.
Pickups are such a compromise....we sure hate having to put them in, but if you want to play live you just gotta have one!

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Mark Swanson
Swanson Guitars
http://www.MarkSwansonMusic.com

John I'm certainly no expert, but I can't tell the difference.

Al

Sorry, I saw the title and had the image of a chap in a baseball cap driving his pickup into an Ovation (nice image) and then finding that it sounded better after!

I have to say I have never heard a guitar with a pickup that sounded as I like an acoustic guitar to sound. We have been recording recently and just use a Shure mic in front to get the sound I like. Those who have heard the recording can say if it sounds like a guitar to them. We play live in many venues and none of us have instruments with pickups, just use mics.

I would have thought that the additional mass of the undersaddle pickup should make no dicernable difference. If the total mass of the transducer is less than about 5gms it also should make no difference.

ColinColin S38811.3736921296

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

    I have used the Piezo designs and found them very acceptable. I can't hear any difference. I agree that adding mass is the enemy but if you are needing aplification they are both great systems.
    My favorite is the fishman Pieze and mic. Adds very little weight. My one hate is the cutting in the side for the equaizer.
John Hall

I think a few different things are being conflated here, so maybe we should straighten them out.

1) Most of the widely available 'acoustic electric' guitars that I've seen have been much more optimised for the amplified sound, with acoustics being secondary. Some even lack soundholes! Generally they are made to minimise feedback, which is one reason they leave the holes out. Often the things that help minimise feedback also are detrimental to the acoustic sound, and, most notably, to the range of 'tone color'. Comparing one of these with one of John's handmades is stretching things a bit.
2)Good guitars are very complex sound producers, and no single pickup will usually do them justice, no matter how good it is. It's like watching a baseball game through a hole in the fence: there's some part of the field you'll miss. All pickups have their own strengths and weaknesses. I've used the B-Band and liked it, but it's no better or worse than some others.
3) A properly installed pickup on a good guitar usually does not effect the acoustic tone noticably. The biggest problems tend to be with things like wires that touch the top or back. It's just possible that the extra compliance of some types of USTs could change the high frequency response of a guitar a little, but I'd take a heap o' convincing. You probably get larger variations in that high end band from the changes in relative humidity from day to day.
4) If added mass worries you, get some poster adhesive ('BluTac' and 'FunTac' are two brands: _don't_ use modeling clay!) and stick a gram or two onto the top where the pickup will go. Notice a difference?

Personally I believe that if you are to play out, you will more than likely be plugging in.   And if you're plugging in, you should have a performance guitar optimized for that purpose.   End of story.

So don't put a pickup into that '34 'bone or your Traugott.   But your audience deserves the best from you. When it comes to a performance guitar, anything goes as far as making it work the best plugged in. You're not going to get the best of both worlds with one guitar; that's a fools errand.

All that said, I'm with Alan.   I think there's more difference between day one and day two of new strings than with a well installed pickup before and after. Also, I'm not a big believer in the theory that vibration is transferred through the saddle and pickup into the guitar top. I think the strings shake the whole bridge which shakes the top.   Yes, the saddle and what's under it affect tone, but I think it's mostly through selective damping of string vibration rather than a vibration conduction into the top issue. I see the saddle and what's under it as a shock absorber directly affecting the strings and as such the hardness and resonant frequencies therein do affect sound. Just my opinion, though I like to see what Al thinks of that...

Not too many people know more about pickups than Rick, so, "what he said".

Vibration transmission through the saddle. I guess one way to look at it is; how else? The vibrating part of the strings touches the saddle, and doesn't touch anything else on the body, so unless you're going to argue that all the sound gets in through the neck....:)

That said, I think Rick is essentially right about the differences between saddles having more to do with what they block or absorb than anything else. Sure, it's a semantic argument, but it's a handy way of thinking about it. Darn near any reasonable saddle material will transmit most or all of the fundamental and the lower several partials of the tranverse string vibrations. That's most of the energy in the string right there. That's why even those cheap boxes with the soft plastic saddles that the evil marketing wizard WaldeMart sells sound sort of like guitars.

The stuff we afficionados get all worked up about is a tiny percentage of the overall signal, but it's the difference between 'good' and 'poor' sound, or even 'good' and 'great'. The density and stiffness of the saddle material, how it's seated in the slot, and what angle it's set at, can probably all make a difference, at least in some cases, in the way the guitar sounds. It's even possible that a well-installed UST could, although I think that's stretching it a bit.

One thing I do beleive is that what the pickup 'hears' in the string has a lot to do with what the guitar extracts from it and puts out into the air. We noticed that several years ago when I deliberately built a good sounding, but quiet, archtop for a friend as an acoustic-electric. The idea was to be able to play it at high gain without feedback. The problem was that all of the 'good' sound was being put out into the air (slowly) by the top and the box, and what was left in the string for the pickup to 'hear' was all the stuff you don't like. Acoustically it sounded fine, but what came out of the amp was nasal and thin. The next one I built was made to have very little low-end tone acoustically, but to have the same sort of 'complexity' that any good acoustic should have. Sure enough, through the amp it sounded full and pleasing, but it was not a very rewarding box to play when it was not plugged in.

So; what Rick said. A lot of the 'acoustic electric' guitars out there are, in fact, much like that second one I built, but a heck of a lot less expensive! If it's for playing out, try to optimise the amplified tone, and don't be surprised if it works better doing that to start with something that's not a good acoustic box.