PRO-REP-103 Rare Earth Blend Pickup

Excellent. Installed into a favourite acoustic guitar for some upcoming shows this is a fabulous pickup system utilising a very slim pick up in the sound hole that doesn’t compromise the acoustic properties of the guitar and a microphone in the body. You can blend these together to tweak your sound. The sound quality is far superior to a Piezo system, which I personally dislike for its toppy unnatural sound. There are cheaper pickups on the market but this is really worth installing. I read someone here complaining about the volume output. That is nonsense it works great directly inputted into an amp or PA and if you want a bit more control use a floor standing preamp. Great product! p.s. don’t ask me about fitting, I got someone else to do that!

I have a seagull cedarwood acoustic, in which the pickup gave out a few months back after 10 years of wear, tear and travel. I removed the pickup and began hunting for a decent replacement. The Fishman Rare Earth series seem to have almost universally positive reviews, and although the 'blended' model is thought to be the best, it is not currently available on amazon. The humbucker model is thought of as 2nd best, and I must say I think it is excellent. It is easy to install, and sounds great, giving a very well rounded EQ, not the overdriven mid-heavy sound of a standard seagull pickup, or the laser-beam-through-the-brain treble overkill of an electro-taylor, but just a very natural, believable acoustic sound, which is versatile enough to be tweakable in any EQ direction once it hits the amp or mixing board. Good stuff, which I would definitely reccomend.

I'm no expert on guitars, but regularly gig with my £350 Farida acoustic. My piezo finally gave out, so I decided to install a soundhole acoustic pickup and this model was recommended by a much more experienced guitarist friend. I did not install it myself, but I just wanted to post that I think the sound quality provided by this pickup is much better than the piezo I had previously. It's warmer, brighter and cleaner. I haven't had to change the batteries yet, so cannot comment on how much of a hassle that will be.

I recently bought a Martin D-18 and never intended to have it electrified, but love the guitar so much I wanted to use it live. In the past, I have always gone for Headway pickups, but this means drilling the area under the saddle and my guitar has the vintage style saddle that sits in a slot that's open at both ends. This makes adjusting the saddle in any way a very skilful operation - skills I do not possess. So I looked around and read some very positive reviews about this soundhole mounted unit and thought I'd give it a go. This is the first Fishman pickup I have ever bought and my immediate impression was positive; well packaged, detailed fitting instruction and a very solid feel to it (apart from the flimsy arm the mic is attached to - all the other comments about this are spot on). Initially, I was going to just have the wire dangling from the soundhole, rather than fit the thing more permanently, but I had nightmare visions of standing on the lead and ripping the front out of the guitar so decided to fit the endpin jack. The instructions talk about using reamers and stuff to enlarge the hole, but if you have the correct final drill size, it's relatively easy to use increasing drill sizes as a series of pilot holes until you get to the final size (half inch, I think, but don't quote me). After shortening the lead wire - leaving enough spare to remove the pickup to change the batteries - I just used a length of solder wire to reach through the end hole and pull the jack through. Once tightened and with the decorative jack surround in place, you're done. By the way, StewMac.com do a clever little device the allows you to replace the jack with a standard endpin if you decide to de-electrify at some point. Plugging in to my Headway preamp the tone is good if lacking in treble a bit. EQ adjustment soon fixes this and it's possible to get a very pleasing tone blending a little mic with the pickup and perfectly good for an amplified acoustic (which I never find truly authentic sounding, but good just the same). This was a good solution to electrify my Martin, but I do wonder if they're worth the extra you pay for it having the mic.

Tried three of these things and they all went Kaput. Decent sound but in the end all three were u/s.

I installed the pickup myself very carefully on my Yamaha acoustic guitar. Easy installation. The sound is superb! The only downside is that it's quite heavy.

I bought this to replace a piezo under-saddle pickup as I had many problems with it. The pickup is well made and fits perfectly in my guitar, the sound produced is very nice and not overpowering. I put the pickup dead straight in the guitar as this sounded the best, they clearly have fine tuned this pickup as many others I have tried needed to be placed at funny angles to get an even balance. The fact it is a stacked humbucker is great, preventing it from dampening the acoustic sound much (I can't hear any difference). Just make sure to screw the screws down otherwise the can negatively affect the magnetic field of the pickup, I had a dead string caused by this and was thinking the pickup was broken, just something to make sure you do. Everything was great though, I recommend it!

Purchased this a while back. Installed it in a high end vintage guitar. Works perfectly with a great dynamic response. Can’t wait to get back out gigging with it again.