Summary: If you’re looking for a great amplification solution for your classical guitar, look no further. This pickup not only has a great, natural sound, it requires absolutely no modifications to your guitar!
Pros: Super-easy to install. Just loosen your strings, then literally slide the pickup under them on the tie-down bar. It takes less than 10 minutes! The pickup is also super-sensitive and even picks up subtle harmonics. The volume control on this model is VERY helpful to dial in gain.
Cons: The ONLY thing that’s even remotely negative is that you’ll need to run this through a DI box before you plug into an amp or PA system as this pickup can be a bit noisy if plugged directly into an input. But any performing musician using an acoustic guitar should have a DI in their bag already, so this is practically a non-issue. But for those that don’t have one, you’ll have to spend the extra cash.
Price: $99
Tone Bones:
Despite that single con, I love this pickup! Once I ran it through my Radial PRO passive DI, the pickup was absolutely quiet, whether I plugged it into my Katana Artist (which required using an XLR to 1/4″ converter), my JBL Eon One PA, or my M-Audio M-Track interface. The sound it produces is incredibly natural, and as you’ll hear in the clips below, just a dream to work with for recording!
It Doesn’t Get Any More Uncomplicated Than This
To the left is my vintage 1972 Hiroshi Tamura classical guitar that I received as a gift from a friend a few years ago. This was part of a three-guitar set she gave me that belonged to her late uncle who passed away in 2003. The guitars sat in her storage shed for 15 years, forgotten until she and her mom cleaned it out. Her mom wanted to give the guitars to the Salvation Army, but my friend suggested that they give the guitars to someone who’ll play them.
I’m a bit ashamed to say that I while I fixed up and played the acoustic and electric guitars, I didn’t touch the classical guitar until a few weeks ago when I had an idea for a new song whose solo would be great using a classical guitar. Then I remembered the P40.
I had only looked at it once or twice since I got it. It had a couple of strings missing but was in otherwise great condition. But rather than work on the guitar myself, I took it into Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto, CA to have it set up and strung. In the meantime, I started researching classical guitar pickups.
One requirement that I had for a pickup was that I wanted to get one that didn’t require drilling a hole at the butt of the guitar to install a jack. That didn’t leave me with many options other than soundhole pickups.
But fortunately, I ran across a review someone did on the Kremona (now KNA Pickups) NG-1 pickup a few years back. The big selling point of that pickup was that it didn’t require any modifications to be made to the guitar. And unlike under-the-saddle piezo pickups, didn’t require sticking contacts inside the guitar. It was literally a flat, wooden stick that slid under the string loops on the tie-down bar. And the sound quality in the reviews of that first version of the pickup was fantastic!
Still, my only nit about it was that it didn’t have a volume control. Being thorough, I surfed over to the KNA Pickups site, and saw that they had an updated version of the pickup, the NG-2, that had a volume control! But the best thing about it was that it only cost $99.00! That was far less than other solutions.
Technically, I could’ve gone the soundhole pickup route. Several manufacturers have them. I even have one installed in my Gibson J-45. But having a wire coming out of the soundhole is a bit annoying as it gets in the way. I had my Seymour Duncan installed that way and used painters tape to secure the wire to the body of my guitar. But I got nervous about the adhesive eventually ruining my guitar’s finish so I had it installed permanently.
But with NG-2, because it sits on the tie-down bar, the cord is completely out of the way. You can see that in the picture of my guitar. Plus, you’ll notice that the jack elevates the cord above the soundboard, so there’s no worry of it contacting the soundboard and vibrating while playing. The KNA folks really got this right!
How It Sounds
Now, as far as sound is concerned, I couldn’t be happier. The pickup is incredibly sensitive and as I mentioned above, manages to pick up even subtle harmonics. Look, it’s not going to be nearly as good as miking the guitar, but then to really capture the sound of an acoustic instrument, you have to have a hell of a good microphone, or use a couple of them.
The volume control is very nice, though it does seem to have a logarithmic taper to it, so little movements of the knob at the upper end of the volume sweep make huge changes in the volume. But that’s not really a big deal. Luckily there’s a nice resistance in the action of the knob, so you won’t have to worry about knocking the knob and changing the volume. Then again, the pickup is really out of the way of the playing area so that should never be an issue.
Below is a set of clips I put together to demonstrate the pickup. The first clip is the raw sound of the pickup with no EQ or any kind of signal processing. The second clip is the raw clip, but with a slightly scooped EQ, with super light compression (1.8:1) and with a touch of reverb and room ambience. The third clip pans the processed clip to the left and I play a solo with a longer tail reverb and deeper room ambience, keeping the compression and EQ the same.
I’m simply beside myself with how natural this pickup sounds. The raw recording is incredibly close to how my guitar sounds naturally. It really sounds like the guitar is right in front of me. Just amazing! And when I add just minimal processing, it takes the sound over the top!
It’s not common to get this kind of sound at such a reasonable price. The value proposition of this pickup alone makes it worth getting. But the ease of installation plus the sound quality makes this pickup – at least to me – the best choice for amplifying a classical guitar.
For more information, visit the KNA Pickups NG-2 page.
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