L.R. Baggs M1 Active Soundhole Pickup

Price: $250 List
Available at: Sweetwater.com

The Good Stuff:

I bought this pickup for my 1960’s Crown Hummingbird copy after hearing how it sounded on my buddy’s Epiphone EJ-200. The main thing I noticed was that it sounded like an acoustic guitar and not like an acoustic/electric guitar. Rather than having the sort of thin, slightly distorted sound that I hear from most under-bridge pick ups, it has a warm woody sound more reminiscent of a mic’ed guitar. There were some super technical explanations on the LR BAggs website about how they achieve this sound using stacked pickups to cancel hum etc. The gist of it  is, that you clamp the sides of the pickup to the sides of the soundhole and this picks up vibrations from the surface wood of the guitar. That tone is then blended with the string sound picked up by adjustable magnets (very similar to an electric guitar pickup). The magnets are adjustable up and down with a hex wrench (included), and it comes with a few extra in case you lose some (which I did ). I have used this guitar/pickup setup extensively like and have not had any problems with feedback (or lack of volume) whether I was at a big outdoor venue or a tiny cramped club. Additionally, the volume knob is located directly on the pickup so there is no need to drill anymore holes for that.  I was also interested in this pickup because you can install a quarter inch jack through the strap button on the base of the guitar so you don’t have to  have a cable hanging out the front of the soundhole like some of the other pickups I was considering. The battery is lithium so it lasts forever too. I have had this pickup for three years and never needed to replace it.

The Bad Stuff:

Honestly, I can’t say much bad about this product. The only problem I have ever encountered is when I adjusted the magnets up too close to the strings and it clipped in the house system a little. It does require you to drill a hole in the base of your guitar to use the strap button input and I know not everyone will be willing to do that. It is also not easy to get in-and-out of the guitar. It is pretty much put it in and leave it. So if you are concerned with having the pickup in your soundhole all of the time then you might not like it.

Overall:

This is a solid product that sounds great and just works. If you look on the http://lrbaggs.com you’ll see tons of professionals use this pickup and for good reason. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a pickup for playing live, especially with a band.

P.S. I am actually hoping to try out an LR Baggs DI with it to see if it sounds even better. We’ll see, we will be posting our DI round-up pretty soon with reviews of a whole range of DIs.