Does a solo mando with K&K Pickup through a PA need a Preamp?

[Josh Levine]

I am playing my buddies wedding solo and have never amplified my mandolin. He will have a PA setup. I was thinking about doing one of the K&K pickups, but I am under the impression that I may need a PA as well. Is this the best route, or is there a more cost efficient way I can do this and still have the mandolin sound good? Thanks for your responses.

[almeriastrings]

Much depends... partly on what the inputs on the PA are like. Ideally, these pickups prefer going into a very high impedance preamplifier, then out to the main mixer or acoustic amplifier. All pickups of this type need a very high input impedance to avoid 'loading' and attenuating certain frequencies. Normally, something over 1M Ohms is recommended as a minimum. In practice, most preamps designed for use with them offer input impedances in the 5-10M Ohm range. This is high enough to avoid loading the signal at all frequencies, across the range produced. By contrast... a typical unbalanced jack input will rarely offer more than 50k Ohms (around 10X less) and the balanced (XLR) inputs are usually in the 600 Ohm to 3K Ohm range - even worse from that particular type of pickup's perspective. So, this is why you really should use a an impedance-matching preamp. Should be noted that if you are able to use an acoustic guitar amp, this will normally have a "passive" pickup input which already includes a very high impedance front-end, so you can get a good match there - but normal PA systems and mixers do not have this facility.

If you are on a very tight budget, you can achieve good results quite easily with this little thing:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/ampli...-preamp-di-box

Take all the "authentic modelling" and "tube" claims with a pinch of salt... the simple fact is that it is a very cheap, but workable, way to take a piezo pickup and convert it into a pair of outputs that easily interface with any PA system. You get 1) A balanced XLR output (at microphone level), and 2) A standard 1/4" jack output that will plug into amps or mixer jack inputs. You also get some fairly basic EQ to allow you to adjust the tone.

I would not pretend it is as good as a Baggs Para DI or Headway... but at $40 or less, it works and sounds OK and makes connecting any passive piezo transducer much less of a headache.

[Mike Bunting]

Much depends... partly on what the inputs on the PA are like. Ideally, these pickups prefer going into a very high impedance preamplifier, then out to the main mixer or acoustic amplifier. All pickups of this type need a very high input impedance to avoid 'loading' and attenuating certain frequencies. Normally, something over 1M Ohms is recommended as a minimum. In practice, most preamps designed for use with them offer input impedances in the 5-10M Ohm range. This is high enough to avoid loading the signal at all frequencies, across the range produced. By contrast... a typical unbalanced jack input will rarely offer more than 50k Ohms (around 10X less) and the balanced (XLR) inputs are usually in the 600 Ohm to 3K Ohm range - even worse from that particular type of pickup's perspective. So, this is why you really should use a an impedance-matching preamp. Should be noted that if you are able to use an acoustic guitar amp, this will normally have a "passive" pickup input which already includes a very high impedance front-end, so you can get a good match there - but normal PA systems and mixers do not have this facility.

If you are on a very tight budget, you can achieve good results quite easily with this little thing:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/ampli...-preamp-di-box

Take all the "authentic modelling" and "tube" claims with a pinch of salt... the simple fact is that it is a very cheap, but workable, way to take a piezo pickup and convert it into a pair of outputs that easily interface with any PA system. You get 1) A balanced XLR output (at microphone level), and 2) A standard 1/4" jack output that will plug into amps or mixer jack inputs. You also get some fairly basic EQ to allow you to adjust the tone.

I would not pretend it is as good as a Baggs Para DI or Headway... but at $40 or less, it works and sounds OK and makes connecting any passive piezo transducer much less of a headache.

What he said, that sums it up neatly.

[Tavy]

For what it's worth, I plug my K&K'ed mando directly into PA's and amps all the time and it mostly works just fine, in fact very well.

I say mostly because every now and then you plug into something where it just sounds like crap You also get less headroom to turn the volume up really high if you're going straight in. So ideally you would try it with the PA in question. I guess playing into a mic is out of the question?

[almeriastrings]

You will sound out of it like that - but as you have discovered, hugely variable results, because this type of transducer does not play well with lower impedance input stages.The input specifications and performance of various PA's and desks can vary widely. It is a generic feature of the class of transducer. They also do not like long cable runs, either. So using a short cable to a suitable preamp, and then a longer cable to the desk (balanced, preferably), will prevent capacitive effects (which greatly affect tone) and reduce losses. For the price of a simple impedance-balancing preamp, most of this unpredictability and unreliability can be resolved in an instant.

[Tim2723]

For the most part, pickups like the K&K are really two-piece affairs that involve the pickup and a premap. Any number of players here have reported sporadic good results without a preamp, but it's chancy. If you can test things out first with your friend's PA and it works, then great. But if not you're going to need a preamp and that little $40 widget is about as affordable as it gets. If your friend has a mic that works well with your mandolin that would be another option. Personally, for a lousy 40 bucks I wouldn't risk sounding bad at a friend's wedding. You can always sell the stuff later in the Classifieds.

[Markus]

I would be really really tempted to make it work via a mic. It will sound loads better.

[almeriastrings]

I agree. Mic wins every time in the quality stakes. For solo mandolin, should be first choice. If competing with a noisy band in a lousy room, though, the pickup has it uses.

[Astro]

Yes if this wedding is somewhere relatively quiet, the easiest and cheapest option is just play through a mic into an acoustic amp or PA. A PA could be expensive and a lot of trouble for a short quiet function if just an acoustic amp will do. If someone else is providing a PA, then its a no brainer. Just bring your mic. But find out what they are providing. Some of the cheapo "DJ" mini PA's that come with cheapo mics may not sound so good for you.

[UsuallyPickin]

If you are "serious" about playing mandolin "out" you need to think about how you sound in any situation you might encounter. There two things you have to control. How you hear yourself and how the audience hears you. So a monitor and a device to reproduce the sound of your instrument. Mics produce a more accurate sound picture than transducers or magnetic pickups. But ... bring with them their own problems. Feedback and exteraneous noises being picked up can make using a mic not worthwile in some instances. Those times you nee a pickup in your instrument. Yes a pickup will work without a preamp, just not as well as you may want it to. So in my opinion here is a list in order of things you might consider to control your sound.
1. Pickup
2. Preamp with batteries or transformer as needed
3. Cable to board
4. Mic , cable and stand , some mics need preamps also
5. Small , 40 to 60 watts w/ low Z line out
My personal choices are Fishman for the Amp and Transducer and AKG for the Mic....... Yes this is a lot of gear on a tight budget but if you collect it over time it will serve you well in years to come...... Also extra cables because cables are wear items and fail at the worst possible moment.... Luck... R/

[Josh Levine]

Wow lots of good information here folks. So I do want to get amplified again down the road, but really this is for this and I will be solo in a pretty quiet place, so it sounds like mic is the way to go. Should I get one that attaches to the mandolin or is a regular microphone fine? This is a pretty small ceremony.

[Dan Hulse]

Wow lots of good information here folks. So I do want to get amplified again down the road, but really this is for this and I will be solo in a pretty quiet place, so it sounds like mic is the way to go. Should I get one that attaches to the mandolin or is a regular microphone fine? This is a pretty small ceremony.

Use the best mic available. Check to see if the church already has one.
In the future a K&K or JJB transducer and a K&K Pure XLR preamp are a nice combination. I have mine mounted on a small clip on stand to my mic stand where I can adjust it on the fly & switch instruments easily.

[Dagger Gordon]

I often play through a pick-up, but were I to play entirely solo at a wedding and a PA was already there I would use a microphone.

Two other points:
If you have never amplified your mandolin, I'm not sure this is a good time to start. The amplified sound can take a bit of getting used to and may well sound a bit 'electric' to you. This is where tweaking the sound with a graphic equaliser or something is useful, but if you haven't done it before I wouldn't do it now.

Play entirely acoustically? I have done that a few times and it can be quite atmospheric at a small ceremony.

[mandroid]

helps ... local control is good ..

[Narayan Kersak]

I've done it a few times just plugging straight into the PA and always got comments about how good the mandolin sounded. No pre-amp needed.

[Josh Levine]

Thank you all for the great discussion and advice. A little update... when all was said and done, he ended up not having a PA. So I just played acoustic and tried to let it rip as much as possible. Wedding was only about 45 people, so it wasn't much of a problem. I got good feedback, so I am assuming everyone heard it pretty well. I will definitely be using this advice later down the line when I need some amplification.

[Steve Ostrander]

I finally took the advice of some Cafe members and bought a Baggs Gig Pro preamp to use with with my piezo pickup and it made a world of difference. No more thin, brittle sound from the piezo, and I actually get a decent chop now. Problem solved.

What I don't get is that our gtr player plugs in his axe with inboard K&K pu directly into the board and it sounds great, no preamp needed. Is that just the nature of the K&K? Are they that much better that they don't need a preamp?

Duplicate post from another forum. Question answered. I looked into the K&K but the luthier I talked to thought taht it would be a real challenge to install into my Breedlove ff.

I tried my Dean Markely outboard PU in several different amps and PA, and it always sounded thin and brittle. Then I got the Baggs and it finally sounded good. Not as good as a mic, but good enough that I can live with it.