Under-saddle pickup

What is it? In the vast majority of cases, this is your common-or-garden, usually pretty harsh-sounding ‘piezo’ pickup. It’s usually a piezoelectric transducer; a strip of material that senses string pressure and/or top movement. It sits between the wood of the bridge and the bottom of the saddle, located in the bottom of the saddle slot. It connects via a wire inside the guitar to a preamp/control panel and/or endpin jack socket. What preamp and power does it need? Under-saddle pickups need a lot of preamplification to get the signal up to a usable level. That’s why the vast majority have an on-board active preamp in the guitar itself that requires a battery for power. Preamps can be sited in the plastic housing in the side of your guitar that also includes all manner of controls for volume, EQ, phase and other features such as a guitar tuner. However the preamp can also be within the housing of the endpin jack socket inside the guitar, sometimes with a separate control-pot plate that sits just inside the soundhole (eg LR Baggs Element Active). There are also complete,‘just inside the soundhole’ systems (eg Fishman Ellipse). And yep, cheap piezo-and-preamp combinations sound almost universally nasty. Good ones are a different ball game, however. How to fit it The pickup itself sits beneath the saddle in the bridge saddle slot. The slot must be clean and flat, and will require a small hole drilled at one end through which to send the wire. The bridge saddle may require filing/sanding down too, to accommodate the extra thickness of the pickup while maintaining your string height action. As for the preamp bit, we’d never advocate cutting a hole in the side of a decent guitar to accommodate a big preamp. The more discreet options attach either by sticky pads and/or magnets inside the guitar. The battery usually sits in a little pouch on the neck bock, for example.

If you need to ream the endpin for a jack/preamp/strap button, that requires a specialist tool and plenty of skill. All up, it’s a job for a professional unless you’re very capable with drills, files and so on. Upsides: Reliable, powerful signal; resistant to feedback; sound engineers understand them Downsides: Not the most ‘natural’ sounding; plagued with string balance issues when not fitted perfectly; work best with man-made saddle materials Our top three picks Highlander iP-1 System LR Baggs Element Active System D-Tar Wave-Length