A few years ago, a friend of mine kindly gave me three guitars that belonged to her late uncle: A 1990 Simon & Patrick PRO acoustic, a 1993 Godin Artisan ST v5, and a 1972 Hiroshi Tamura P40 classical guitar. I fixed up the S&P and the Godin and have gigged with both since I got the guitars. But I didn’t touch the Tamura because I’m not a classical guitar player. So I kept it in its hardshell case, out of the sunlight.
But a few weeks ago, I started envisioning playing and recording solos with a classical guitar to get that natural woody sound that only a nylon string can produce. So I brought the P40 to my local guitar repair to have it set up and strung. When I got it back, I couldn’t believe just how gorgeous it sounded and just how well it projected its sound (I’ll do a review on the guitar at a later date).
The only problem was that if I wanted to gig with the guitar, I needed a pickup. Unfortunately, the soundhole is too small to fit my pickup of choice, which is a Seymour Duncan Mag Mic. Plus, the Mag Mic is really optimized for steel-string guitars. So I had to do some research.
One thing that I didn’t want was something that required me to drill a pickup hole in the guitar. The P40 is a real vintage guitar, and while it doesn’t have a big street value, it carries with it a lot of sentimental value for me and I didn’t want to be drilling holes in it, lest I alter its sound or mar the memory of my friend’s uncle. So I needed a good, portable solution. My search led me to the KNA Pickups NG-2.
The incredible thing about this pickup is that it sits on top of the tie block right behind the saddle. You loosen your strings so that you can slide the pickup right under them. It’s ingenious! It literally took me ten minutes to install it, with most of the time spent loosening my strings enough to be able to slide the pickup into place.
I do have to admit that I was a little leary of the pickup’s sound because it’s a piezo and they’re notorious for producing that “piezo quack.” But all my concerns were laid to rest once I plugged it into my amp. Once I dialed in the EQ, I couldn’t believe just how natural the pickup sounded. It really captured the woody tones of my guitar!
To be honest, the pickup does have a slight hum plugged straight into my amp, but I was able to get rid of most of the hum by dialing back the volume on the pickup, reducing the input gain on my amp, and controlling volume with the master volume. I should be able to eliminate it for the most part with a notch filter. And when using it to record, I can just isolate the frequency and take it out of the mix. Yeah, it’s a bit more work, but for how it sounds despite that hum, I couldn’t be happier.
When I do my full review on the pickup, I will include sound clips.
Guitar Gear 
Leave a Reply