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Fiashman Single Coil Rare Earth Acoustic Pick-up Reviews  2 / 5 based on 1 reviewsI bought this pick-up out in Sydney Australia with the band when I found an old Martin I just had to have and wanted to use it in the set that night.
Well.. OK. Its looks great.. Mat black and quite thin it sits snuggly in the soundhole bearing the name fishman name that inspires confidence in all who use them.. The installation (which I had done proffesionally) is a relatively simple job.. and you could do it yourself in ten minutes - as long as you have the right drill and your nerves can hack drilling a hole through your pride and joy.. mine couldnt so it went into to be done the store I got it from.. It installs neat and tidy and you plug in through the endpin where the strap button used to be on the base of the guitar.. the rare earth series have a built in pre-amp (also contained in the endpin.. So it literally is plug and play.
OK lets cut to the chase.. The tone is TOO BRIGHT. there.. I said it. I realise that its a single coil (and I certainly had no problem cutting through the mix with it.. drums bass and all).. but seriously even after tweaking all the trebbles in my Boss-AD8 and turning them way down low on my Marshall AS100D.. it was BRIGHT. Somehow it seemd that my B and High E strings were amplified 30% more than the other strings.. so fingerpicking was out of the question.. The rare earth magnets seemed to cling to every little nuance of treble tone whilst neglecting the lower mids (a lot) and the Bass strings (almost entirely) so to re-cap it made this beautiful old martin sound like I was playing a Weasel through a handbag (if you know what I mean).. I spoke to Fishman Customer services (who are ALWAYS very helpful) and they told me that I should have bought the humbucking pick-up of the same line - as it has a brightnes switch for that exact problem. Another thing I hated (yes Hated) about this particular pick-up was that if you go anywhere near a monitor or phone or amp you get a serious hum.. which you then spend half the day EQing - what pissed me off more was that my tech has a crappy old cheapo guitar with a chinese pre-amp and it plugs in no worries (no hum).. so we ended up using that
Its well constructed and sturdy and all wiring is done to the usual high standard..and all in all its what you'd expect from the good old US of A
Its too bright for my taste..(or anyones I imagine).. the quality of the workmanship is great but spoiled by the tone you get even after tweaking it.. I'd stay steer clear of this model - maybe try the humbucker (it "bucks" the hum remember).. and its only a few more pennies Jimbob Jones rated this unit on 2004-07-07.
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