Schertler putty

[siren_20]

I have, unfortunately, lost the little jar of putty that came along with my schertler pickup. Not wanting to spend the outrageous sum of $15 on a replacement jar, I figured I would check with the infinite wisdom here and see if anyone is (a) in the same boat as me and (b) has a viable, cheap alternative... perhaps that stuff used to stick up posters on walls?
Thanks in advance!

[bradeinhorn]

that or tape or those sticky pads 3M makes?

[Perry]

Not wanting to spend the outrageous sum of $15 on a replacement jar

Wow; try buying a beer at BB KINGS in Times Square http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

[mandroid]

Maybe Blue tack rubber clay at the office supply?
no guarantees about what happens to the finish.
Catalyzed Polyurethane finish is tough, lacquer less so. varnish would come in 3rd.

Repeating myself .. , I'm still on the first and only ball of putty from the original
tin.
never needed to replace it, it just stays on the pickup, which gets stowed face up.
a piece of plastic , sticking to the ring of putty, covers it.
peel off the plastic , minor reshaping ring, and back on it goes.
years have passed... http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

Perhaps something else would fill the hole in the storage box?
perhaps just a ball of what you need on the pickup then tape the tin down in the box,
so as to lessen the next misplacing potential,
and buy a couple pints with the change from the $20.

[jim_n_virginia]

I used one for a while and lost my putty too. The Blue Tack putty from Office Max works fine and didn't do anything to my finish. I like the Blue Tack better in fact than the putty that comes with it because it comes off cleaner without all the residue and prints all over the instrument. And don't buy into that story that the putty you get from Shertler is specially made for sound tranfer because that is a load of crock... it is plain old putty.

What made me stop using it was I got tired of always having to clean the front of my mandolin from all the residue. I now have one of my gigging mandolin in the shop and I'm gonna try a Macintyre feather internally and see how it sounds.

[craig.collas]

Good to hear what you think of the pick ups what is the schertler like compared to the fishman and also the feather.

[Paul Hostetter]

Jim - I think you'll find the Feather will be extremely "hot" in your mandolin. When you hold it and talk, your voice will come out the speakers as if you're talking into a microphone, which is basically what the mandolin has become. I think the older McIntyre disc pickups or the K&K ones like them work better, but they need a good cushion of putty and a good DI like the Baggs PADI to finesse the sound. I've installed about every kind of pickup there is in mandolins and don't really like any of them. I think microphones rule, and if you know how to position instruments and speakers and walls, you don't have feedback issues.

[mandroid]

Craig, there are few contact microphonic pickups, 2 in common use are
Schertler, 'Dyn M, ' Is a dynamic type.
AKG makes a condenser type contact microphone,C411.

all the rest of the pickups are using a piezo-electric ceramic crystal.
sound as though they need something to cure the shortcomings,as often said.

fwiw, the ring of putty works as much by suction as stickyness .
there is one point of contact with the top the ring is also isolating from
the extraneous noise that may come from the sides.

[siren_20]

Thanks for the various responses! I'll give the blue tack putty from the office superstore a try and see if that works... I guess the idea was to find some way of not spending $15 on a jar of putty and spending it instead on pints... http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif
As for the schertler vs. any other pickup... a friend of mine said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that the Schertler isn't the best mandolin pickup out there, it's just the least sh***y one available. I'm inclined to agree with him, I just don't think that the required R&D has gone into developing a good solution to the particular needs of mandolins. You have an instrument with poor sustain, medium volume, whose rhythmic style requires a transducer with excellent impulse response... it's a complex question and I haven't heard/seen any solution that seems optimal. I have a couple ideas as to how to solve this problem but I'm just not sure if I'll ever be able to actually realize them.
Another sort of misconception about the schertler is the fact that it's actually an electrodynamic accelerometer, not truly a microphone. The ring of putty only serves to get that little rubber foot in contact with the top and form a vibrational circuit between the transducer and the instrument. It's not sensing any air pressure changes like a true dynamic microphone would, it's merely reading the mechanical vibration directly off the top of the instrument.

[mandroid]

not to split hairs, but, accelerometer, in this case , would also be a coil of wire and a magnet thats moved by dynamic motion imparted on the soundboard, a diphragm . which it is in contact with . 'same/diff'

Its Austrian colleague would be a capacitance accelerometer then.

thanks to Gilbert> Maxwell> Faraday, etc..

[TonyP]

I totally agree Paul. How do you expect to get a "real" sound when it doesn't happen till somewhere in the air out in front of the mando? I've seen the signal chains that are required by the "big boys" like Sam Bush and to some extent others. It's outrageous, several boxes to get what a cheap mic could do and still not good. To each his own, but it's hard to not sit and shake my head when someone wants "real" tone out of a pickup, no matter the cost.

[siren_20]

Kind of an update... I found some Elmer's reusable adhesive at the local craft store, it's a little heavier and not as sticky as the stock crud but it works just fine. And it does have less residue... and at two bucks I'm not complaining. ;-)
I agree with both Paul and Tony, it is outrageous that the current technology still means that we have to use so much signal processing equipment to get what is in the end a mere approximation of a mandolin. I'm currently working on designing a new custom preamp for the Schertler as a school project, but at the end of the day I'm still going to be limited by the response of the transducer. I've had to accept that no matter what kind of custom EQ/shaping I try, the thing still sounds like the schertler. The adjective I keep coming back to for the schertler is that it sounds "boxy"... midrangey, constrained, and very much compressed. On the upside it does sound closer to being "real" than any other mandolin pickup out there, in my opinion at least.
Perhaps I'm being a bit of a screaming idealist here, but I really do believe that there is a way to get a more "realistic" tone out of a mandolin pickup, and I'd like to see some of the major manufacturers try to come up with a better solution.

[mandroid]

design ideas:a preamp and mixer to add in the outside of the box, and the air motion from inside the box , pickup + mic.
a variety of reverb programs, alter either input in parralell; an eq with an LCD virtual display of the bands effected

[rather than physical slide pots]
patch 'bay' for a variety of output types all in a small belt pack..

though this, suggestion box for J.T.'s preamp project, is perhaps drifting off topic .

[TonyP]

Thanks for not getting offended JT. I would think the AKG 411 setup, combo mic and p/u would be the solution. But I think I'd be missing the point, you go with strict p/u to avoid feedback at high levels. Wouldn't it be better just to go with an electric mando, midi triggered and then you can sample the best TONE(Dawg Reishman et al), and get that at any level? Just wonderin' out loud....

[Paul Hostetter]

Do you expect to be playing bigger venues than David Grisman? He doesn't use a pickup or an onboard mic.

[jim_n_virginia]

Jim - I think you'll find the Feather will be extremely "hot" in your mandolin. When you hold it and talk, your voice will come out the speakers as if you're talking into a microphone, which is basically what the mandolin has become.
Paul I have the Macintyre installed but it's going through a Fishman Pro Platinum EQ and then a Bose PAS system and it is anything but hot. In fact I am amazed that I can brush my hand across the top and hear minimal sound. Yes you still hear some sound but nothing like the Fishman bridge pickup I had where shirt buttons on the back sounded like nails being driven in by hammers.

I know nothing is as good as playing into a mic (and we still do) but I played a 3 hour gig tonight with the Macintyre and I didn't have to stand there and hold my mandolin near a mic all night.

I got to move around, sit on a stool, straighten up my back... and BOY did it feel good!

Oh yeah, I was at an open mic night one night and some singer songwriter type was using one of those dreadful stick on wooden checker pickups you stick to the top of your guitar and he didn't have enough putty on the pick up and it kept popping off and he forgot to bring any extra and he chewed up a big wad of gum and you guessed it! Stuck that sucker on with a bit of Wrigley's sang his 5 songs and was done. It totally worked and had everyone laughing.

And I guess after your turn up there you can always peel it off and chew some more! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

[siren_20]

Ha, I had actually thought about just chewing up some Wrigley's... do you think the Spearmint or the Doublemint would sound best? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Interesting ideas, mandroid... for this project I'm really trying to stay away from doing any DSP, this is more of a pure analog thing. What I'm attempting to do is develop a low gain, all-tube preamp with an external expression control. Right now I'm starting to experiment with different topologies to see how they sound.. there is already so much available in the way of DSP that I'd prefer not to mess around with that stuff just right now. As a last resort I'm thinking of adding some fairly simple EQ options in certain frequency ranges where I feel the thing could use a spot of help.

The main thing that appeals to me about using a pickup is basically what Tony and Jim have mentioned... it's not so much a question of venue size, to me in that regard, it's about convenience. In using a pickup I'm always assured that I can be loud enough with respect to the other folks that I'm playing with and not have to worry about feedback as much. I played with a friend's jazz combo recently... upright bass, electric guitar, drums, and vibraphone, all mic'd and/or amplified. Because they had a decent sound man who knew where to position all the various components, I was able to use a mic (a real nice Beyerdynamic, purloined from the horn section) and leave the Schertler in the case. Long story short, I'd absolutley prefer to use a microphone, but as Jim pointed out it sure is convenient to not be stuck in front of a darn microphone all night, and not have to worry *as much* about feedback issues.

[B. T. Walker]

Duh! Juicy Fruit

http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif