What Are Your Favorite E-mando Pick-Ups?

[Ed Goist]

What pick-ups have performed well for you in solid or semi-hollow bodied E-mandos?
What is your favorite pick-up and why?

If you have experience with multiple e-mando pick-up shapes [bar, single coil shaped, double coil shaped (traditional humbucker shape)], please answer for all.

If someone plays mostly Blues and Rock, and is looking for good tonal versatility in an e-mando pick-up, which pick-up(s) would you recommend?

[Daniel Nestlerode]

I am of two minds about the pickups I've used. But I have very limited experience...

Love, love, love the tone of my Fender FM-988's single coil. Very Jerry stuff comes out of that little guy.
I find the Epi Mandobird's pickup has really smooth overdrive tones. Very Santana-esque. Love this one too.

Both of the above have hum, volume, and balance issues though.

So I also love love love the JB-53's on my JBovier EMC-5. They are smooth, noiseless in humbucker mode, and powerful. Great for clean tones. Excellent for Jazz. And in overdrive, they're a little reminiscent of a Les Paul.
But they are little, umm, polite, I think. Or maybe I just need to run them through a bigger amp to get them to start honking a bit.

Would like to hear the Almuse pickups for sure.
Would like to have a Fender pole-style pickup that balances and controls hum a little better too.

Daniel

[mandroid]

put a fender lace sensor gold version , strat style in my 1 built for me 4 string.
got the pickup loose , and then got the build done..

seems OK , but I'm not in a position to pull one out and try another on the same instrument.

Stuck An EMC select, a stacked humbucker in the FM61.. stewmac had them at $20,
got a gang pot, at the same time , so one knob went away ,
when making a new scratch plate for the top, used a better jack too.
pulled the stock scratch plate off as a whole, and made a new one..

[Ed Goist]

I've received some interesting and thought-provoking replies to this question through personal messages.
One intriguing (and somewhat surprising to me) common thread in the responses has been a preference for single-coil pickups. Here are a couple of quotes from very well-respected and experienced players:
"...I haven't heard a humbucker on an emando that I like yet..."
"...All of the memorable and great electric mandolin music out there has been played on instruments with single coil pick-ups..."
Comments?

[Tom Wright]

I find it easy to EQ a single-coil to sound like a side-by-side humbucker (lose some 4K, boost the 2K) but difficult to do the opposite, since the double location cancels some harmonics and they can't be re-created just through EQ. If humbucking is wanted (and who doesn't?) there are stacked single-coils to do that job while sounding single.

[Verne Andru]

I recently picked up a Fender FM-60E. Comes with 2 strat-like single coils and had the traditional Fender noise issues.

So I pulled the mando apart, shielded the entire electronics cavity and back of the pickguard. There's a guy in town with a machine that flips the polarity of magnets, so for $5 and reversing the wiring the mando humbucks when both pickups are engaged. Sounds very, very nice now. Absolutely no electronic noise. When I open the mando up next I'm going to add a couple push-pull pots so I can switch between parallel/series wiring and in/out of phase.

I've added Lace sensors to my reso-mando and my f-style. I also put a couple piezo contact mics on the soundboard. Straight humbucker or piezo tone is kinda meh, but blended together they sound superb.

[Christian McKee]

My two favorite P/U sounds are the pre-1960 mandocaster stock pickups - they SCREAM, and have more clarity than I know what to do with, and the EMG Overlans in my five string. If I were commissioning an instrument, it would likely have EMGs in it, the mandolin seems to like active electronics.

[mandroid]

have an EMG Strat type stacked humbucker in my FM61 scratch plate replacement.

favorite suggests I went thru a number of other choices first, but that would be too costly.

[Elliot Luber]

I put a Bill Lawrence set of humbucking rails into the slot for the lipstick pickup in my Kentucky emando, and it made one heck of an improvement!

[Verne Andru]

FM61 scratch plate replacement.

Does somebody make these or did you have to get a custom?

[mandomiser]

I use an old Dean Markley guitar pickup attached at a 45 degree angle with velcro on my dirt cheap Kentucky KM 1505 and get nothing but compliments playing with church groups. Honestly, these lengthy discussions on electrifying mandolins and what to do to get the sound just right crack me up!

[rico mando]

I use an old Dean Markley guitar pickup attached at a 45 degree angle with velcro on my dirt cheap Kentucky KM 1505 and get nothing but compliments playing with church groups.

Good for you , those church groups can be a real hard crowd to please . i am sure it can be quite hard to get a nice compliment at those kind of gigs .

thanks for cracking me up .

[Ben Milne]

The Kent Armstrong pickup in my Bacorn sounds great, as does the Almuse in my 'bird.

My Tucciarelli has Seymore Duncan Quarterpounders which was pretty good until I got the Bacorn. The string spacing is quite oversized and the geometry to the PU poles doesn't quite line up - one way to get some more timbre variation in the Bridge PU I guess. If it got more use at a later date I'd consider an upgrade for it and deal with pole alignment then.

[mandomiser]

Be careful of the antenna on that van, Ben! We don't want ya to get van aerial disease.

[Jim Bevan]

I really like the Stever Ryder single-coil pickups on the tele model he made for me (with a custom 7.25" radius neck).

My favourite pickup, however, is the humbucker in my avatar, but I doubt it's available anywhere -- it's on a custom-made clone of a '59 Les Paul built by Takeshi Iwamoto, and either he made it himself or had someone make it for him. It's super-clear, very punchy, has a ton of output (more than the Ryders) and yep, it really does sound like a Les Paul.

[Ed Goist]

Just discovered this neat pick-up selector tool on the DiMarzio website.
Pretty cool!

[mandroid]

Originally Posted by mandroid
FM61 scratch plate replacement.

Does somebody make these or did you have to get a custom?

the somebody was me, cut it out, basically, copying the original one,
with hand tools.
made a pickup hole for a Strat type PU, and left out the drilling the hole for 1 pot,
and used a gang pot, 2 concentric , in the same hole. .. instead ..

the original plate has all the orignal parts back on it, in a box ,
somewhere around here.. buyer can get both ..

I expect if you supplied the original plate, to someone with all the power tools
the edges would be the same as the original, using a router pattern,
rather than a jewelers saw and an eggbeater drill ..

[Terry Allan Hall]

Bought a Soares "P-90" recently and I like it better than any mandolin p/u I've ever heard, because the "mandoliness" comes through very well, if you know what I mean...it doesn't make my mandolin sound like a tiny electric guitar!



Of course, if you want your mandolin to sound like a tiny electric guitar (apparently, that sound makes a lot of my fellow mandolinistos happy), then it may not be as good a choice.