Official Luthiers Forum!

I do live in Bluegrass country after all.

Well, installing the pickup will probably raise the action... so mission accomplished?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Yeah I thought the same thing till I gave it a once over. The neck is dead flat to almost negative relief. So this will be an easy fix. Good thing too since it's a through the bridge saddle.

The action as is would be perfect for me. The guy has Monels on it now and I have to say it's one of the good ones, this guitar just sings.

Hard to beat the sound of an old Martin. I didn't see many of them, so it was always a treat to have one in the shop.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Yea it's pretty fine sounding HD-28 with the scalloped and forward shifted braces. I've had a few of these in this year and every one of them sounded fantastic.

Installing a K&K won't raise the saddle but it will sound amplified just like it does without an amp. At our shop we installed a set in a Godin and were amazed at how little it colored the output.
https://www.kksound.com/acoustic-guitar

We are installing a Fishman system to be run with the Aura Spectrum which has become my absolute favorite way to amplify an acoustic guitar.

I do love the K and K's too though. Great set up there.

But what do you mean by, "but it will sound amplified just like it does without an amp." ?

It's indeed rare but it happens and often with the better players who want to get under strings to do their thing.

JF I wanted to mention that both Dave and I think that Martin is building some of the best sounding 28's and 18's since the pre-war ones. They are light, they are using the best from the past in design and bracing and they are very well made. Good time to buy a Martin and then wait 50 years for it to sound better than it does now

Allan we love K&K too and tell our clients that if you have a great sounding guitar now and want to preserve that K&K does that very well. We are not however using adhesive to attach the elements and had some fall off that way so we use medium CA.

Not using what adhesive?

Pat

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Pat

They supply a double sided adhesive with the pickup. But they recommend CA gel glue.

Bad choice of words. To me anyway, a piezo pickup in an acoustic has a particular tone/color/sound that identifies it as a piezo. I can't describe it. But the acoustic with the K & K didn't have any of that. If a person had their back to the guitar and amp, they wouldn't have known it was amplified. But you always know it's amped with a piezo.

Better?

We don't use gel CA either and prefer just ole Bob Smith purple top (medium).

Dave made a two pin locator tool that carries the elements to their respective positions and registers on two pin holes for positioning.

As for me I just position my task light directly overhead and sight through the pin holes and stick the elements this way taking care to not be too close to the pin holes.

What has helped make this super easy to us is a quick sand of the bridge plate, a quick wipe with a paper towel and then a quick wipe of the plate with a paper towel sprayed in CA accelerator. They grab to the plate very quickly this way.

And learning just how small a drop of CA is required so that it does not glue my finger inside a D-35 has been helpful too

Golf tees aside.... some of the things I read about how sensitive the positioning is makes me wonder where some people get their pot, it's obviously better than mine

My friend Link Van Cleave turned us on to how he puts one knot in the cable on some guitars to suspend and take up the cable slack, works great.

Sorry for the high-jack just wanted to do a data dump on K&Ks a favorite in our shop for great sounding instruments including mandos.

Oh got ya. Yeah the K and K's sound great. I really like them. But for many years, since I got into this in the 90's, I have always hated Piezo's and tried to steer people away from using them becasue they sound terrible. Then, a couple years ago, a fellow local musician introduced me to the Fishman Aura and there was no going back for me. They are expensive but for any of my clients that can afford it and want what I think is the best stage system out there I recommend a Fishman piezo but ONLY if they also get an Aura.