Electric cittern electronics

[tony lubold]

I'm thinking of building a five course solid body electric cittern and I'm not having much luck figuring out the pickups. I was thinking maybe a five string bass pickup but not sure if it will handle the treble side very well. I'm thinking a standard guitar string length and a tuning something like GDAE the E being the same pitch as the treble E on the guitar. Any suggestions?

[JC Whitney]

Have you considered a twin blade (vs individual pole pieces) humbucker?

[Mark Swanson]

Any blade type guitar pickup will work, as well as most any bass pickup. Try not to get a really hot pickup, go for a clean one.
By the way, you are describing a four-course instrument, that would be a bouzouki or an octave mandolin, while a cittern has five courses.

[Mike Conner]

It helps in your design phase to also consider strings. It is really difficult to balance out string to string volumes using typical acoustic phosphor-bronze strings, unless the pickup is designed to compensate for the PB strings.

Nickel wound strings will give a much more pleasing electric tone and easier to achieve the string to string balance. The trade off is slighlty lower tension and a mellower, less punchy acoustic tone - if your instrument is designed as a primarily acoustic instrument rather than strictly electric. Since you are bulding a solid body, you will likely want to stay with nickel strings. So...

If you can design for ball ended strings you will have nearly the entire range of gages to choose from to optimize the string tensions at pitch. Loop ended nickel strings are limited in terms of gages.

Just some design thoughts to consider, from my experience in designing an octave mandolin. The desire to have a pleasing and functional acoustic instrument tone led me away from magnetic pickups and into internally mounted piezo transducers. My design is 23.5" scale, tuned GDAE with gages 044, 032, 022 and 012.
//mike

[Mark Swanson]

Have you ever posted photos of your instruments Mike? I would like to see your octave mandolins. Are they acoustic or electric mandolins? You are correct in your comments about the strings, for a solid body electric it is far better to use the ball-end nickel strings.

[tony lubold]

Thanks guys....all sounds reasonable...appreciate it

[Mike Conner]

Mark,
Perhaps the most convenient way would be to check out the Gallery in my Archtop Build Journal, posted here on MIMF:
http://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=3905
I can send you a higher res version of the Journal - PM me if interested.

I haven't figured out how to reduce the file size of my pictures to the file size allowed on MIMF. Here's an attempt to link to my facebook photo of the most recent GOM:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater

I have used JJB dual piezo transducer in most of my builds, even the guitars with floating neck pickups. So, primarily acoustic instruments but with piezo transducers as a standard.

The drawing for the GOM was also just recently posted to MIMF and can be purchased here. The proceeds go exclusively to MIMF to help with operating costs.
//mike