(Work in progress ...)
2012 ...
I was on vacation and had no instrument with me to practice since I had planned for 'just a week'. But then -after some days of week one- I decided to extend the trip for another week - but that meant, that I could not practice for yet another week although I had just re-started playing guitar two years before and was amid the beginning ...
So I scanned the Internet for nearby music shops and a specific instrument that I always have been ogling: a small-body 'blues-box' Epiphone "EL00" - just right for a small person like me ...
Well, I found my shop and I found my preferred Instrument in that very shop so I rushed to the nearby city and bought the instrument on Thursday before "Whit-day" 2012 ... nacked, no pickup system...
2015 ...
As a freelancing IT systems engineer, I had just finished my last contract by December 2014 and no follow-up contract but finally much time at home to practice guitar. But I always liked to hear myself with sound coming from an amplifier emerging towards me - just to hear things better. That's why I bought my first instrument (Yamaha 'L-Series' with an ART-Pickup-System) years before. But my Epiphone had no so-called 'pickup system' and I decided to look for one.
The pain began ...
A market full of stuff and names: FISHMAN, L.R BAGGS, K&K, and a lot of others, that all were ranting the same way:
"We are the best, we are the greatest ... pick our stuff"
What?!? How about some information and facts instead of just 'marketing hype'? ... that was all that was going through my mind when I was confronted with all these pointless rants.
This was not helpful at all ... so I leaned back sticking to the old Roman rule:
"Divide et impera!" ... Separate and rule - just to find the truth ...
I started by classifying the types of pickup systems that are available on the market and there were:
- Electromagnetic pickups that all need to be clamped to the soundhole somehow
- All this stuff called piezo, transducers, 'contact microphones' which needed to be mounted to the soundboard in order to work at all.
- ... and some/rare 'microphone-based' solutions to be mounted inside the instrument.
But which way to go?
(to be continued ...)
