Magnetic Spot Pickups

Price $16 each

(Quantity discounts avaialble)

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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, this pickup can be used for instruments using steel strings, as well as mbira- or kalimba-like instruments with iron or steel tines, xylophone-like instruments with steel bars or tubes, and many others types. It 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 thirty and beyond will work, but with decreasing signal strength and high frequency response as the numbers get larger. For installations that call for large numbers of pickups, you can preserve signal strength and frequency response by wiring the pickups in two or more sub-groups which are buffered from one another by sending their signals to separate mixer inputs or separate in-line pre-amps before mixing the signals. With the availablility these days of small mixers that are both very compact and very affordable, the mixer approach is emminently practical. With this buffering, 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 of 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 comparable to or marginally less 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.

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

Magnetic Spot Pickup
Price $16 each Item #121
Add Spot Pickup to Cart

Quantity Discounts: We offer discounts on the Spot Pickups when you buy in quantity. Our web software can't handle the discounts conveniently, however, so to get the discounts you'll have to order offline by fax, phone or email. (It's easy.)

Discount schedule. -- quantity and price:

1-9: $16 apiece
10-15: $14.50 apiece
16-20: $13.50 apiece
21 or more: $12.50 apiece

For more information on the Magnetic Spot Pickups, click here.

For more general information on different types of pickups, click here.