Electric mandolin pickup

[bulldog]

Im beginning an Electric solid body mandolin, 8 string, (not 4 or 5). I would like to know if anyone has any recommendations as to what kind of pickup to use. Seymour Duncan has a mandolin humbucker Im leaning towards but Im not sure if it will work on an 8 string ( It has 4 poles). Any thoughts?

[MandoBen]

I always like the sound of an old Danelectro Lipstick tube tilted at a sharp diagonal from the bass end near the bridge to the treble strings near the neck. It looks kind of backwards if you are used to looking at strats and teles but it sure sounds sweet. Also sounds good with a bridge transducer system of some kind for an acoustic sound, but instead of a selector switch try a blender knob.

[mandroid]

Both strings would sit over the pole, most likely.
or close enough,
the string moves in an electromagnetic field so exact is not crucial.

A manner to adjust the whole pickup or the pole pieces nearer or farther from the strings is a consideration.

pickups wound around a bar are even less point specific, than individual poles .
strat format pickups work well as they are slim
and can be set at an angle to make them seem shorter too.

Fender gold Lace sensor, Akg Select stacked humbucker seem OK
2 pole type S.Duncans ; single coil 5 pole
and
a humbucking 4 pole have found their way here.

lots of electric (4,5,&8) mandolin chat at the bottom of the page,
a section precisely for this topic.

[BigNick]

It sounds like you are looking for a magnetic pickup and I had the same problem as you.

Last weekend I read about some people using half of a standard P-Bass humbucker as a mandolin pickup. When split you get two small 4-pole single coil pickups. It is also low profile so you can stick them on with putty.

I didn't want to route out much on the mandolin so I bought some sealer putty (comes in a roll). Tested it to see if it would harm the finish by taking it on and off. Then I mounted a small volume pot on the pickguard and ran the wires through the F hole to a jack in the bottom right hand corner of the mando (side, not top). I then used a small Fender jazz bass knob so it wouldn't be an eye-sore.

The used Seymour Duncan p-bass pickup cost me $10 and I had the other stuff. If you are in to the blues thing like I am, this really does the trick. The coils are big enough for both strings on every pole and the bass magnets are strong, clear, and punchy.

In the end I only had to route one hole in the body of the mando for a jack. The difference in sound acoustically was hardly noticeable, and if you took the pickup off it would be back to normal for the most part.

I will post pics when I get a chance.

[jmkatcher]

There's a couple of excellent if not cheap options.

Jason Lollar and Seymour Duncan will wind custom mandolin P90s. The former especially would be excellent. Jason also winds a DeArmond Gold Foil clone (not on the web site) that would be excellent. Also there's the world of blade pickups including gems like the TV Jones Supertron.

[BigNick]

Pete from Vintage Vibe Guitars also makes incredible pickups and he offered to make me a low profile mandolin pickup for $75-$85 shipped with interchangeable sets of magnets.

Pete's pickups are top-knotch and he is usually much cheaper then the big name brands.

[Martin Jonas]

I've just installed a pickup in an 8-string solid-body mandolin (previously equipped with piezo pickup only), and the one I settled on was the GFS Lil Puncher by Guitarfetish (http://store.guitarfetish.com/lilpuxlnepif.html), for a very reasonable $29.95.

This is a humbucker designed to swap out with a Telecaster neck pick-up, which means it has only the footprint of a single-coil pickup (full-sized humbuckers look vastly oversized on mandolins). #It's a blade design, so there's no problem with alignment of pole pieces, and although it's made for the wider string stretch of a guitar, it's small enough that it looks good even set at right angles to the strings. #On mine, the pickup extends about a centimetre further than the outside strings on each side. #The two coils are side-by-side, like a full-sized humbucker, rather than stacked. Finally, it's a four-wire pickup meaning that it can be wired to a switch to alternate between single-coil and humbucker configurations.

I really like the tone I get with this, in both the humbucker and single-coil configurations. #It's strong, warm, clean and rounded with little noise.

Martin

[amowry]

Kent Armstrong makes really great custom pickups at a reasonable price.

[Ted Eschliman]

I have 3 different pickups on three different mandos with Kent Armstrong pickups. Highly recommended.

[bulldog]

Just to let everyone know the outcome...
I ended up speaking with the folks at DiMarzio, and went with their DP127 Split P Bass pickup. Its a dual rail humbucker. Buying the set gives you two of them, and it should give a nice warm, clean sound. Thanks for the input folks.