Magnetic Spot Pickups

Sorry, this item is no longer in stock and we're not sure when or if we'll be able to make it available again.

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The Spot Pickup from Experimental Musical Instruments is a mini-sized electromagnetic musical instrument pickup. Electromagnetic pickups are most commonly used in electric guitars, but they can be used equally well in any instrument in which the vibrating element is made of steel or other ferrous metal. Thus, these pickups can be used for instruments using mbira- or kalimba-like instruments with iron or steel tines, xylophone-like instruments with steel bars or tubes, and many others types. They can also be used with steel string instruments with just one or two strings, or with a larger number of strings too widely spaced for a single guitar pickup.
These pickups can also be used with non-steel instruments (for instance, wooden xylophone bars) if a steel plaque such as a washer is attached to the vibrating body where the pickup can sense it.

Guitar pickups are made in a bar shape suitable for the six strings of a guitar. Our Spot Pickup is designed for other sorts of applications, where a guitar pickup won’t fill the bill. They’re particularly suitable for instruments in which the sounding elements are too broad or too widely spaced for bar-shaped pickups to be practical. In such cases, you can place one Spot Pickup under each sounding element.

You can use many Spot Pickups wired together in a single installation. How many? You will get good signal strength, signal-to-noise ratio, and frequency response with up to about 12 or 15 Spot Pickups wired in series, or in a combination of series and parallel wiring. Larger numbers up to 30 and beyond will work, but special wiring is required to prevent decreasing signal strength and high frequency response as the numbers get larger. In these cases you can preserve signal strength and frequency response by wiring the pickups in two or more sub-groups and sending their signals to separate mixer inputs or separate in-line pre-amps before mixing the signals. With the availability these days of small mixers that are both compact and affordable, the mixer approach is practical, and with the buffering between groups of pickups that the mixer provides it's possible to have unlimited numbers of pickups without signal loss. You can read more about different wiring configurations by clicking here to preview the Installation Information that is included when you purchase the pickups.

The Spot Pickups are provided with copper shielding to minimize unwanted noise. The hum level from a single Spot Pickup is considerably less than that from a typical guitar pickup. In installations with many spot pickups, the hum level may increase. To reduce the hum level further in multi-pickup installations, the Spot Pickups can be used in humbucking pairs. Each pickup is marked with a white or a black dot. By using an equal or near-equal number of each in your installation, you’ll be getting the noise-reducing benefits of the humbucking design.

In signal strength, the Spot Pickup is a somewhat weaker than an average guitar pickup.

The impedance of a Spot Pickup installation depends on how many pickups are connected in series in the installation. Typically it will fall in the nominal high-impedance range, meaning that you can plug the output from one or more Spot Pickups into a standard musical instrument input. This includes electric guitar amp inputs, as well as high impedance mixer or PA inputs, keyboard amps, powered speakers and acoustic guitar amps.

As for appearance – well, it’s true that our Spot Pickups are not the loveliest of things to look at. Instead of putting the effort into making the Spot Pickup slick-looking, we’ve taken an approach that keeps it affordable, compact and sturdy.

The Spot Pickups come with extensive documentation and easy-to-read diagrams for wiring options. You can preview the documentation here.
For more general information on different types of pickups, click here.

Quantity discounts are available for this product:

1-9 pickups: $16 each
10-15 pickups: $15 each
16-20 pickups: $14 each
21 + pickups: $13 each

After you click "Add to Cart," the discount for the quantity you indicated will be reflected in the shopping cart window on the right.

Dimensions: 1 1/8" high x 5/8" wide x 7/8" long.
Resistance: 600 Ohms per pickup.

Item #121

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