Seymour Duncan Woody SC, or HC

VTgreen81

VTgreen81

Active member
Has anyone tried these Drop-in soundhole acoustic guitar pick ups? For 35 bucks I'm sckeptical, but I'd like to trust the Seymour Duncan name.

On tuesday I have to decide between the acoustic/electric model or the acoustic model of the guitar I'm buying and I've convinced my self that once they cut a chunk out of the body and attach an electronics box to it the body is not going to resonate as well and sound crappy acoustically. I'm more concerned about the acoustic sound than the plugged in sound, but would like to be able to plug in sometimes, or maybe even record direct. I'd like to be able to drop in a P/U just when I need it, but I want it to sound accurate, not too "electric" sounding.
 
Well, the problem is that it's pretty much impossible to tell you whether or not either of those pickups will sound "good" to your ears. I have a guitar player friend that uses one, and he's somewhat satisfied with it, but he is still planning on upgrading to a nice acoustic/electric as soon as funding allows.

I was recently in the same boat, and did a lot of reading about this topic. From my research, I think the general consensus among acoustic players is that they don't like the sound of those cheap soundhole pups. They sound way too much like a mellow electric guitar. They also tend to feed back pretty bad, if you try to use them in loud settings. However, the piezo systems don't sound particularly "realistic," either. So, what's a guy to do? The people that really care a lot about their live acoustic guitar sound usually end up using a combination of two or three different systems and mixing them - piezo, soundhole pup, or internal mic. And each of the individual systems that they use in this approach is considerably more expensive than the Seymore Duncan Woody. And still, none of these systems sounds so good - by itself - that you'd want to skip using microphone(s) when it comes time to record, unless you're going for a certain sound as a special effect. The best way to get a nice acoustic guitar sound is to mic it with one or more properly placed microphones. Period.

If you're going to play an acoustic guitar through a PA system, and you're not willing to sit in one spot and carefully keep your guitar in one position relative to a couple of nice condenser mics, then the simple fact is that your guitar IS NOT going to sound exactly like it does acoustically. I think it's best to just simply accept that fact and decide how much of a compromise you're willing to live with. But I would strongly encourage you to listen to your guitar with one of those cheap Seymore Duncan pickups before you buy one. You may or may not be satisfied with the sound. Many guitar players are not.
 
The cheap magnetic pickups suck. Period. They will amplify your guitar, but they will make it sound like an electric. Bad. There are good magnetic pickups – one of them extremely good – they just are not cheap.

There is, unfortunately, no really good way to amplify an acoustic cheaply.

Do a search on here with my name and acoustic pickups. I just got back from the Healdsburg guitar festival, and I am too fucking tired, but you will find a few of my long winded missives on the subject of amplifying acoustics. They should tell you everything you need to know.


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