Any acoustic pickup is a set of compromises. Remember that, as we will be coming back to it.
First off, for recording, you will never find a pickup that will sound good enough to record with. This is simply a fact of life, and there is nothing you can do about it. When you are recording, use a mic. Even a mic will never capture the sound of your guitar, but it will be a lot better than anything else, and it CAN actually sound good.
O.K., so that is recording, but what about live, you say?
Well, the most accurate reproduction of your sound is STILL going to be a mic.
Sort of.
The think is, in order for that to be true, you need to find the right place to mic your guitar, and then stand there, all but perfectly still, without letting your guitars move even an inch. I can't do it, and I don't know anyone who can.
And then the second problem with having a acoustic guitar mic onstage. I have listened to cued up acoustic guitar mics through headphones. You know what you hear? Most of the times, you hear the drummer. There MIGHT be a little acoustic guitar in the background, but mostly, you hear the drummer. Direction mics are not as directional as the manufacturers might want you to believe.
So, now we come to the real point of the question. What pickup is going to sound like a faithful representation of your guitar?
None of them.
Sorry, but it is true. The sound of your guitar is a vastly complex combination of the top and top bracing, the strings, the size of the box, and any number of other, unknowable, variables. Magnetic pickups capture a small part of the strings (and the Baggs M1 may say it captures some degree of the body sound, but what it really does, according to all the professional’s I know who have tried it is feedback). Undersaddles pickup the vibration of the strings at the bridge. Other piezo transducers pick up various parts of the top, but only a small part of it. Internal microphones pickup up some air moving, but the inside of the guitar sounds NOTHING like the outside of the guitar. And all you can hear in them is STILL the drums.
So, like I said, compromises.
By far, the most popular pickups are undersaddle piezo pickups with a built in preamp (these do NOT need to be the ones with controls in the side of the guitar, and in fact usually are not. They are simply a part of the endpin jack and a battery, which is usually attached to the neck block.) Of these, the first was the Highlander, the most popular is the Fishman, and the best (IMNSHO) is the D-TAR Timberline. There is not a whole lot of difference between these, but there are some. The primary difference between the Fishman and the others is that the Fishman Matrix has a flat transducer, which means you don't have to make any notable modifications to the bridge or saddle slot ( you drill one small hole, and that is it). It is a much easier installation, though still one which should only be attempted by professionals (if for no other reason than to do it yourself voids the warranty on both your pickup and your guitar).
The D-TAR's primary difference is in the power supply. It is an 18 volt system, as opposed to the Highlander or the Fishman Matrix which are 9 volt systems. What this means, to my ear, is a much more transparent, and cleaner signal. On the Fishman and the Highlander, there is a bit of a tendency for the high's to distort a bit, and they can sound a bit harsh because of it. The D-Tar does not have that. It is a fairly bright pickup, but the highs are smooth and clear.
That being said, I am still not going to change the Fishman in my main guitar, even when I can get the D-Tar at wholesale and the labor for free. The difference is just not that great.
Then you have other piezo transducers, such as the B-Band or the Baggs iBeam. They are fine, and may possibly sound different than the undersaddles (which you may or may not like), but they are unquestionably more prone to feed back, as the pressure of the strings really helps the sensitivity of the undersaddle pickups.
The other primary category of pickups is the magnetic soundhole pickups. The gold standard of these things is, without question, as it has been for almost 20 years now, the Sunrise. Nothing else even comes close. I've heard the Baggs M1, I've heard the Fishman Rare Earth, and they just don't have it. They are fine pickups, and they are much better than their cheaper cousins (such as the Dean Markley or Seymour Duncan soundhole pickups), which are little more than a joke, but they are nothing like as good as a Sunrise through the Sunrise buffer box. This is the primary source for sound for MANY very demanding artists, including Michael Hedges, Leo Kottke, Lye Lovett, and countless others.
The magnetic pickups are, in essence, electric pickups. They SOUND more electric than undersaddles. They are, of course, wound to sound less electric than a SD Pearly Gates or some such, but they still sound pretty electric. Their strongest suit is the lower end and the fundamentals, and most of them are all but immune to feedback. Down there they sound great, but they are not very good at the shimmery stuff that is so much a part of most pop acoustic guitar sounds.
Then, there is the premium option, which is combination systems. Leo Kottke uses a Sunrise and a microphone out in front of his guitar. He plays solo, so this works pretty well for him. Michael Hedges was famous for using a combination of the Sunrise and a Frap system (which is no longer made). Pat Donahue uses
a Fishman Pocket Blender, which is a Matrix undersaddle combined with an internal microphone, and blended in an external box (they now have an internal blender called the Ellipse, which is minimally invasive on the guitar, but which gives you MOST, but not ALL of the functionality of the Pocket Blender). The Baggs Dual Source uses and undersaddle and a iBeam (but it does so by putting a huge box on the back of your guitar, which gives me the hebbie gebbies). All of these are just an attempt to get a more complex version of the sound than you can with just one pickup. None of them are going to give you YOUR guitar, but they can get closer to sounding like A guitar.
Myself, if I was doing a lot of gigging and wanted to build myself a live guitar with, among other things, the perfect pickup system, I would uses a D-TAR Timbreline and a Sunrise soundhole pickup. The Sunrise gives you the fundamental and the low end, with the Timbreline giving you the sparkle and the shine. But of course, I can get both of those at wholesale, and I would be doing my own labor, so the cost is much lower for me than it would be for you. Mix those together either in the board, or with something like a Pendulum (or some such similar idea).
Don't even get me started on the idea of modelers. Let's just say that when my Fishman rep sent me an Aura, we all agreed that it sounded best with the bypass button ON.
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