Electrifying an Old Acoustic

[cheepaxes]

My first guitar was an early '70s (Matsumoku?) Epiphone FT-145 acoustic. In recent years it had been loaned out to some student friends and sort of fallen into disrepair. It needed a neck reset. Fortunately it has a bolt-on neck so the reset was as simple as shimming it. Some years back someone told me that the Beatles used flatwounds on their Gibson J160-Es, so I tried putting flatwounds on this. I started thinking about putting a pickup on it. Picturing those single coil pickups on the J-160s, and knowing I had some Squier Strat pups hanging around, I decided to try putting one on this guitar. Since they're electric strings, the electric guitar pickup should work OK.

I made a wooden mount for the pickup, installed an endpin jack and wired the pickup to it. I still haven't figured out how to hold the pickup in place. I took it to a gig Saturday and used clear packing tape to hold it in place. It's in this picture:

www.scottmcknight.com/JRMDEEJ.JPG

Note also the bandaids covering a hole that got punched in the top about 33 years ago.

The guitar didn't sound that great going straight into the board. I liked it better through my Deluxe Reverb when I was playing around with it at home.

I'll try taking a closeup pic tonight. Any nifty ideas for how to affix this in place without messing up the guitar?

-Scott

[cheepaxes]

[VintAxe]

[cheepaxes]

That's kind of the lines along which I've been thinking. I'm not sure I could get away with using the same screws as the pickup, because they're busy holding the pickup at the right height. I had tried to make a matching mount to the top, out of wood and then heavy plastic, that would go inside the guitar and connected to the top piece by 3-4 screws. Then I could tighten the two together and effectively clamp the whole thing to the guitar. Both of these inside pieces broke while I was making them and I ran out of time/patience to do more.

If no one has any better ideas I'll probably pursue this approach more later.

-Scott

[VintAxe]

Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of 12-14 gauge hobby sheet metal Scott. It would have a little spring to it so that you could get it snug without marking the top of the guitar. It also wouldn't break no matter how many holes you decide to drill through it. Might be able to use galvanized flashing as well if you don't have a well equipped hobby shop near your place.

[cheepaxes]

Hmmm, I like the flashing idea. I have no hobby shops nearby. If I can't get it at Lowes, or it's not lying around the house, I can't get it.

-Scott

[cheepaxes]

UPDATE: I finally got back to this project. I picked up some flashing last year but never got around to using it.

I ended up installing the magnetic pickup by mounting it in one of those rubber sound hole plugs. My first thought was cut a hole in the plug the size and shape of the bobbin, push the pickup through from behind and use pickup mounting screws to hold it in place. That resulted in the pickup too far from the body. I ended up enlarging the hole to the size and shape of square magnets on the bottom of the (Squire) Strat pickup. I pushed the pickup down into the plug and the rubber holds it firmly without fasteners. I cut a slot in the rubber to feed the pickup wire down into the body.

Here's what the pickup installation looks like:

http://www.scottmcknight.com/EPIPUP.JPG

And here's a bit of recording, using my cell phone as a recorder and plugging the guitar into a Crate bass amp that I had handy. Note that the thunky deadness of the bass strings is a function of the flatwounds:

www.scottmcknight.com/EPIPUP.mp3

It's not a beautiful acoustic guitar sound, but I think it could work well as a rhythm guitar in a band.

I think I should figure a way to ground the strings, no? Ideas?

-Scott

[johnnyb]

scott,
it seems like it worked pretty well, and the sound hole cover will keep the feedback down. it makes your acoustic sound like a hollow-body electric. pretty cool. i think the sound hole covers are pretty cheap too. i put a pup on an acoustic bass i have and it came out like this. i modeled it after the dean markley type acoustic pup.

[cheepaxes]

Johnnyb, What you did is what I originally had in mind. I lacked the tools to easily cut the pickup-shaped hole into the wooden mount. I used a drill and made the hole by cutting 100 tiny holes around the perimeter instead. By the time I did that with (what turned out to be) a too-thick piece of wood I didn't have the patience to do it again with two smaller pieces.

-Scott