I have a drawer full of pickups and a stand full of acoustics without electronics. If only there were a …
Eureka! That’s the answer.
EurekaSound is a Canadian company that builds a bunch of “Why didn’t I think of that?” guitar products. Besides the pickup mount, the Baitar is their cool guitar/bass hybrid.
Back to the mount! The company makes something called the Sound Hole Pickup Mount. And while its name seems pretty self-explanatory, I’ll go a bit deeper. The mount clips onto the sound hole of your acoustic guitar without any modifications and without leaving behind marks of any kind.
The mount houses any standard single-coil-sized pickup. Instead of soldering, there's a terminal that you clip your pickup’s positive and negative leads into with a screwdriver. Other features include a volume knob and a ¼-inch output jack that clips onto your guitar’s strap button. Everything is completely passive, so batteries are not required.
For the review, I used a Fender Standard Strat pickup I had lying around. I also tried a mystery single-coil-sized humbucker just to see if it would fit. It did, but I preferred the sound of the Strat pickup.
Installation took about 10 minutes to clip in the pickup and properly set the height. Since your pickups are probably designed for an electric guitar, it will take a few minutes to find the sweet spot. I had to angle the mount a bit to get the pole pieces to line up with the strings.
The two sound clips below are the Strat pickup first on a Yamaha FS700S acoustic (clip 1), then on a Seventies Ibanez 12-string (clip 2).
Web: eurekasound.com
Price: $39 shipped; available in white or black (shown)
You can't believe everything you read on the Internet, but Billy Voight is a gear reviewer, bassist and guitarist from Pennsylvania. He has Hartke bass amps and Walden acoustic guitars to thank for supplying some of the finest gear on his musical journey. Need Billy's help in creating noise for your next project? Drop him a line at thisguyonbass@gmail.com.