bouzouki pickup

[Alan Bates]

Hi. Does anyone out there have any experience with a pickup for an Irish Bouzouki. I need one on one that I made and not sure what to use and don't really want to use a stick-on type.
Thanks

[Mark Swanson]

Hello Alan...yes, I build these and I use pickups that I make myself, but they are very much the same as commercially-made pickups of the undersaddle piezo type. So, you can use a regular guitar undersaddle pickup, get one that has a strip of material that is sensitive along its entire length- Baggs makes nice ones- and try to avoid a pickup element that has six sensitive spots on it for the six guitar strings because that won't line up very well with the bouzouki strings.
Now, this depends on the bridge you are using of course. I use a bridge with a slot routed in it for a bone saddle, just like a guitar has. If you use some kind of mandolin-type bridge then of course you can't use an undersaddle pickup because there is no saddle.
Then, if you have an undersaddle pickup, you need to get the wire from the pickup itself into the mandolin....I do it the same way a guitar does it, drill a hole right through the top. The only difference is the mandolin has a floating bridge, and the guitar has a fixed bridge but in reality the mandolin bridge needs to stay in the same place anyway, right? So I very carefully locate the correct spot for the bridge, and then drill a hole through the top at the same spot where the cable from the pickup exits the base of the bridge. My mandolins have a small bridge plate beneath the bridge, and that helps reinforce the hole from the inside also. Here's a photo for you.

[Alan Bates]

Thank you, Mark. I was unaware that there were pickup strips that were not attuned just to 6 guitar strings. Oh, and beautiful work by the way!

[Alan Bates]

I've looked at Baggs and there seems to be two, I think. The "Element Active System" and the "Ribbon Transducer" Any thoughts on these. They both seem like they might work. I don't like the 9 volt battery business but seems to be part of the deal. Could a person not use the 9 volt batt. and just use a pre-amp instead?
Thanks

[Mark Swanson]

They are both good pickups. The battery is a drag, but its advantages outweigh the bad...You could use an external preamp, but that has disadvantages. The connecting cable from the preamp to the instrument will pick up noise and become microphonic. That's why the preamps and the batteries are always inside with these pickup systems. The batteries last a very long time.

[Jim McConkey]

When I built mine, I put in both a glued on piezo disk and a Pick-Up-The-World pickup glued inside under the bridge, with both wired to a stereo endpin jack. Being on the inside, no drill holes were necessary, except, of course, the hole for the endpin jack.

I wouldn't bother with a piezeo disk again, but the PUTW works nice. I can't remember which model it was, but there should be a review by me somewhere in our Library.

[Michael Lewis]

Both Schatten and K&K offer piezo disc elements for mandolin family instruments. Easily installed and no battery needed. I have used PUTW also but had some issues with the metal end of the element buzzing and rattling, otherwise they are a good item.

[Nicholas Blanton]

Once you could pretty easily get either piezo film strips or piezo cable from Measurement Specialists http://www.meas-spec.com/
and you could make your own pickups, but they point you to distributors now, and none of the distributors in the US seems to carry anything other than the very small , already-formed sensors, that are not that useful for making into pickups.