Pickup Swap on Dillion Emando

[Ruinfalls]

I have a very pretty PRS-looking Dillion emando that plays wonderfully. Unfortunately, the maker has very different taste in tone from me, and thinks the mini-humbucker sounds great. I think it sounds muddy and singularly un-mandolinlike. Has anyone ever successfully swapped one of these out for a piezo or other acoustic-sounding pickup?

The solid construction all the way down the middle of the body does not lend itself to in-body stick on pickups, nor do outside ones work well. The best I've been able to do is get an acoustic simulator pedal, though there's just no getting rid of the static. (Running it through a cheap Pocket Rocket-type headphone amp works o.k., too.)

Thanks for any suggestions, and especially if you know of an actual non-humbucker I can stick in the existing slot, even with some routing.

[jefflester]

It's designed to be an electric instrument, you're not going to get an acoustic sound out of it.

[mrmando]

You might try removing the bridge and putting a piezo film-type pickup underneath it:
https://www.pickup.world/

No guarantees as to how it would sound. Piezo pickups sense vibration through wood, not through air, so trying to put a piezo pickup in the hole left by a magnetic pickup won't work and will make the instrument look ugly. I don't know of any piezo pickup configured in such a way.

If you want something that looks like a PRS and sounds great acoustically, you need a Rigel.

[pops1]

There are electric guitar bridges with piezo pickups in each saddle. You could get micro dot piezo's and drill and glue them into each saddle, and go to a separate jack, to a preamp or acoustic amp.

[mandroid]

RMC is one maker of piezo individual piece pickups . that lie under the strings .. made in dual and single notch types.
It's a metal piezo-crystal sandwich, each with a signal lead.

Got a good acoustic MIDI algorithm? they , RMC makes Roland Compatible 13 pin outlets
to use their pitch to midi processors..

[Verne Andru]

Like this?

160385

2 options:

install something like the Graphtech Ghost saddles which will give you a piezo output

and/or

if it's a 4 conductor mini-humbucker, convert one or both of the pots to push-pulls and have one of them turn the humbucker into a single coil. It will still sound like a guitar, but a single-coil tone is distinct and has uses in a range of musical types.

As noted above, it's meant to be an electric instrument so a lack-luster acoustic tone is to be expected.

[mandroid]

2 more..


Yea Graphtech makes a similar thing, think you have to buy all 6,
Packaged for guitars, so mandolins waste 2. or use 5, of 6 ..

It's adding a second signal source rather than replacing a single one..


I put a DIN 8 pin jack, or the installer did, the piezos have their own tone controls in a black box ..the RMC polydrive II.

http://emando.com/images/builders/Biller.jpg

http://rmcpickup.com/polydriveii.html added onto the case is a separate jack for the magnetic pickup.
it used the 7th contact of the 8.




....

[Nevin]

Before you go with a piezo, check the value of the capacitor on the tone pot (and if therre is one between the volume and tone pots). I Have seen more than one instrument come from the factory with the wrong value and they can make an instrumetn sound very muddy. I don't have the correct values infront of me but I can check,

[pops1]

Before you go with a piezo, check the value of the capacitor on the tone pot (and if therre is one between the volume and tone pots). I Have seen more than one instrument come from the factory with the wrong value and they can make an instrumetn sound very muddy. I don't have the correct values infront of me but I can check,

Start with a .02 micro farad and try different ones until you find the sound you want, .002 is not too small. You can also use a resistor/ capacitor network across the volume pot to keep the highs in when you turn down the volume and keep the volume pot from loading the circuit.

[pops1]

If you want to retain highs when you turn down your volume pot use a .001 micro farad cap paralleled with a 150K ohm resistor across the volume pot. When you turn down volume it won't get darker.

[mandroid]

A link or picture of what a Dillion Emando is, would have helped..

[Paul Busman]

It's designed to be an electric instrument, you're not going to get an acoustic sound out of it.

Not necessarily. I play my Eastwood Mandocaster through an inexpensive Fender Mustang I amp which has a library of various modeled amps. The '65 Twin Reverb gives me a good enough acoustic sound to play in an Irish band, especially in noisy venues where nobody can tell the difference anyway ;) .

[Ruinfalls]

It's designed to be an electric instrument, you're not going to get an acoustic sound out of it.

Thanks for the singularly unhelpful comment!

[Ruinfalls]

Thanks!

[Ruinfalls]

Thanks! I'm still optimistic about getting a decent (at least close to) acoustic sound out of this thing, though.

[Ruinfalls]

Well, someone posted one above, but I figured the information that it's an electric mandolin with a muddy mini-humbucker would be sufficient (as it seems to have been), but thanks for letting me know how poor my posting was. I just love these kind of helpful comments!

[rockies]

When I read a thread like this one with poor weak mushy tone I always wonder ... are you using "electric" strings? You wouldn't believe how many instruments came to me with that complaint that were using phosphor bronze acoustic strings. Especially mandolins with surface mount magnetic PU's and guitars with sound hole mag. PU's and yes even solid body instruments.
Dave

[pops1]

When I read a thread like this one with poor weak mushy tone I always wonder ... are you using "electric" strings? You wouldn't believe how many instruments came to me with that complaint that were using phosphor bronze acoustic strings. Especially mandolins with surface mount magnetic PU's and guitars with sound hole mag. PU's and yes even solid body instruments.
Dave

I have heard many guitars with magnetic pickups and phosphor strings and thin sound. I was surprised when I put a magnetic pickup on a mandolin and the phosphor bronze strings sounded better than the electric strings I had on before. Guess without much lows the mandolin doesn't care.

[rockies]

Not much magnetic material in the steel core of bronze wound strings so I've never liked the thin tone but whatever works.
Dave

[Tom Wright]

I swapped my mini humbuckers for my favorite pickups: stacked-single-coil pickups from Steve Ryder. But even regular single coils with be an improvement, because they have more useful highs. A magnetic pickup does not see the note that is a harmonic node, so the tone is all the other harmonic nodes (places where the string is pivoting around a shorter wave, an even division of the string).

Regular side-by-side humbuckers lose highs because they lose harmonics at the adjacent locations of the two coils, whereas a single coil loses only the one harmonic. BTW, that is why mags sound different at different positions along the string, and a difference of 1/4 inch makes a difference in tone.

A way to deal with the different cutout is an extra plastic cover plate to carry the slimmer pickup. I did this on my Almuse, using cover plates provided by Steve. In my case, the stacked coils are rather taller and needed some chiseling to deepen the body cutout. Regular single coils would not likely need further excavation.

Steve's stacked singles have excellent hum cancellation, and I have used them on acoustic instruments with good results. I was able to balance them for bronze wound strings by using a very short pole piece for the A strings, and normal for the typically weak E strings. But they sound great with nickel electric strings, and a bit of pushing pole pieces up or down while unmounted can get you string balance adjustments.

[pops1]

GHS makes a pure nickel string set for mandolin that will be magnetic. They also sound great acoustically.