almost perfect.
Pros: great punch, great mid range tone, excellent assemble design
Cons: too narrow element, no Low E presence, still too big for vintage styled archtop guitars.
I bought this pickup for the advertised qualities. what drew me to this pickup over others it that it is going on a Loar 309 archtop which has a much lower bridge/saddle height, and this pickup advertises being able to fit lower profile archtop bridges. The overall design is excellent, and the fact that the saddle came contoured and string ready was excellent too. The new bridge design is very ideal for many different archtop tops too as it is flexible. I had to make serious modifications to not only the bridge height, but also the saddle in order for it to physically fit my guitar. once that was done (about 2 hours), I restrung the guitar, and plugged it into a fender acoustisonic amp. once first notice, the pickup sounded amazing. big, beefy, punchy tone with not feedback issues. BUT... No low E string. the pickup is not built wide enough to pick up the full E-E string distance. there is at least a 4db difference, if not more, between the E and A string. Since I had already modified the assembly, I couldn't return it. My next step was to remove the element itself and mount it to the original Loar saddle, adjusting it closer to the low E string (hence farther away from the high E string). This took another 2 hours because I needed to notch the Loar bridge in order for the element to fit in between the saddle and the bridge. Reassembled, there was a SLIGHT improvement in the low E, but still not as good as the Fishman archtop pickup I have on my Gretsch G400B. So I buy a ten band EQ pedal. Although it greatly improved the overall sound and punch, I STILL have a drop off on the low E string. Schatten should seriously consider making the element longer and better equiped for modern archtop designs (with a E to E string distance of at least 2.25") and also should make available the element only, which can be easily mounted to an existing saddle. Until then, I could never recommend this pickup.
Submitted by: joshuablackwilkins on 05/26/2012 11:19:38 AM