Abilene PU100 Magnetic Soundhole Pickup Reviews 
1 / 5 based on 1 reviewsABOUT ME: I've been playing for over 20 years, for fun and professionally (is there a difference?). I'm in several bands; i'm also a studio musician. My musical tastes range from Alice Cooper to the Hellacopers. 'Acoustic' music i dig includes John McLaughlin.
WHERE ACQUIRED: I bought a PU100 last year because i thought something low-end might sound cool through a practice amp (playing slide on a parlor guitar). I paid $30 online for it.
WHAT I LIKE ABOUT IT: 1. It's somewhat adjustable, in that while the body remains about level with the soundboard, the coil can be adjusted up or down quite a bit.
2. Whatever it is coated with is flat black, making this thing darn near invisible in a dark guitar.
3. Unbelievably, this pickup comes with a 1/8" to 1/4" cable, which means you're not stuck with a hard-wired cable that could eventually get a short. Many pickups that cost WAY more than this one are hard-wired, and people complain about the shorted wires.
4. It's cheap.
WHAT I DISLIKE ABOUT IT: 1. It sounds as good as my worst experiments with duct-taping humbuckers into acoustics as a kid. I can't even describe the tone; it's just "not good".
2. It has a volume AND a tone control, which, if they worked would be a good thing obviously; but they don't. Mine was not an anomaly – if i'd read some reviews before buying this pickup i would've figured that out!
3. String to string balance is OFF. Just like duct-taping an electric pickup into an acoustic, the B string is completely noticeably louder than the other strings. So much so that it CANNOT be ignored. Individual string adjustment is not possible with this pickup (the poles are housed in plastic). This alone makes the PU100 useless in my opinion, even for beginners (especially since there are so many $30 pickups out there these days).
UNIT QUALITY: The build quality is actually not bad at all for $30. Like i said, the volume and tone knobs don't work, so that's obviously a 'quality' issue! lol
SUMMARY AND FINALY COMMENTS: Don't buy this pickup. Don't buy it for $30 off the internet; don't buy it for $15 off ebay; don't buy it off some guy named Amall Gib even for $5! If not for the string-to-string balance problem, this pickup might have actually been able to produce some cool (if not 'acoustic-sounding') amplified tones. But, the string imbalance is definitely a show-stopper in my opinion. Maybe try a Duncan Maverick instead, which is the same price (then post a review of it!).
Amall Gib rated this unit
on
2006-08-08.
