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Permalink Reply by Dave Lynas on July 7, 2013 at 12:25am

Hi Alex. I'm with you pretty much. I like the blues, but not the growly, loud, big chord sound. I like clean acoustic with some strong bass added. I play bluegrass, folk and country and some early country blues and poor man's jazz. I get this with old MIJ (60's Japanese) pickups. Used with steel strings. Nickel strings help. Teisco vintage pickups have this sound if you don't add effect pedal stuff to distort it. They are somewhat microphonic so you get the acoustic sound of the wood and sustain (if you use thickish wood and solid necks made of good tone wood like Mahogany and Maple or Cherry. The sound is as much in the guitar as it is in the pickup. I love "gold foil" or silver foil Teiscos or American made DeArmonds. Single coil with a ground to the strings and metal covers to the pickups. Old lap steel pickups have this quality also. "Speed bumps", "Pancakes" and P90 Gibsons have the sound. A good tone pot with a good capacitor helps a lot too. I like to cut back the treble and up the bass. It takes a good capacitor of the right value to get it. Good capacitors are rather pricy. Many of my first box guitars have piezo electric pickups. These go inside the box usually under the bridge or right in the bridge. They have the acoustic sound for sure. What i don't like about them is they reflect the sound of your touching the guitar. Any finger tap on the body sounds through. There are some great builders that use them a lot. Check out Randy Bretts (sp?) MoJo Bone pickups. They are as beautiful as you can get. Other builders wind their own pickups. Check out Ted Crocker pickups, JUJU (from UK), Elmar's "Flatpups" he's from Austria. I have used all of their magnetic pickups and love the sound. Elmar's flatpups are easy to use as they are very flat and don't require cutting a hole in your guitar top. Surface mount. Many inexpensive Teisco mag. pickups are surface mount like the flatpup but are not as thin. There is a Teisco metal covered pickup with black foil inside the holes and adjustable pole pieces that works great. You see them on many of the Teisco, Zenon, etc. MIJ guitars. I have about a dozen such guitars and like them all. I'm talking from a poor man's standpoint. If you've got the big money I can't advise you. That's all i know...... Dave

Permalink Reply by Alex Cartwright on July 7, 2013 at 4:48am

GREAT info...thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on July 7, 2013 at 5:10am

Dave knows his pups, fer sure. There are also other ways to get that bluegrassy, almost banjoey, sound. First you can get that tone with a simple piezo to jack setup, move the piezo around under the lid to emphasize bass or treble frequencies, put it in a wood sandwich, or bury one in lots of hot glue or silicone, then EQ it at your amp, if you're not running a preamp. Second, use lighter strings. The deep growl many blues fans like comes partially from thicker wound strings ( plus a slide, o' course). Instead, use the first three strings from a medium bronze set, or go unwound nickel 9s or 10s from an electric set.Third, reflective metal surfaces, like a reso, or a wire computer speaker / fan grill cover, will send you to the mandolin or Dobro end of things pretty quickly. Your license plate build should be a good example. Fourth, playing technique can get you that tone, even on a swampy delta blues box. Metal finger picks, metal plectrums, flatpicking near the bridge, banjo finger rolls with both the right and left hands, playing on the pads of your fingers reeeellly close to, or even underneath, the nail, can get you there. Bluegrass rhythmic figures also help, as does locked-in alternate picking. Varying your nut and bridge material from bone to metal screws can also aid that tone, as do cookie / metal tin resonator boxes. Shorter scale lengths, double string courses, maple versus mahogany versus rosewood neck woods, thinned tops, papier mâché...the list is endless. Oh, and don't forget banjo tunings on four-bangers.

Now, see how many build variants you get to try? Hehehehe...

Permalink Reply by Alex Cartwright on July 7, 2013 at 6:31am

Ha-ha, that's ok! Gives me an excuse to keep making more in different ways! Thanks for the ideas!!!

Permalink Reply by Kirsten Macfarlane on August 10, 2013 at 10:03pm

ooh that answered my question thanks!!  :D

Permalink Reply by Dave Lynas on July 7, 2013 at 1:25pm

Nice ideas Oily. Thanks for the tips. I've tried the sandwich idea in wood and inside the bridge with a rod piezo or two discs in silicone sandwich with wood. You can get nice ones like this from Blues City. I've used them in two builds and love the raw sound. I guess i'll just keep trying. Everything seem to work if you just try....

Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on August 10, 2013 at 11:02pm

-> have you tried the knobs on the amp? :)