Acoustic pickups

[SFDonovan]

Looking for a Xmas present to myself.  Are any of these acoustic pickups worth the effort to get installed on my Seagull, or should I just save up for an acoustic/electric?

Reason is I found a great local buy on Craigslist of a good 2 channel acoustic amp.

[deadeye_ag]

Hey Donovan,

I've been contemplating the same thing. I have a Seagull S6 and was talking to my local guitar guy about adding pickups to it. My "dream guitar" is a Gibson J-45 custom which uses L.R. Baggs Element pickups and so he told me I could install those and it would suffice as a substitute for now. He claimed that I could get a similar sound as a J-45 when plugged in since the pickups significantly contribute to the tone. I'm a little skeptical on that but I suppose that could be the case. I'm really into Texas Red Dirt music and the J-45 is THE acoustic that a lot of those guys play. But the customs run 3K and up *yikes*. Admittedly, I know very little about pickups but I thought it was interesting that you were also thinking about adding them to your Seagull.

[TB-AV]

I've heard good about the S. Duncan pickup.

[Scooter Trash]

I was playing some acoustic guitars at the music store that had Fishman pickups in them. I was impressed!

[SFDonovan]

You know, if I'm never planning on performing live, I'll probably never really need a pickup.  I think I'm just looking for an excuse to spend money.   

[bradt]

You just answered the question I had...why do you want the pickups?

Since it's not for performance, if you mostly just want it for recording and messing around, you may look into getting a mic and stand instead.

[Borodog]

True that. I've recently come to the conclusion that no acoustic guitar pickup system can come close to a decent condenser mic sitting in front of the guitar. They can be awesome for live shows, but for recording, just mic it.

[Scooter Trash]

You know, if I'm never planning on performing live, I'll probably never really need a pickup.  I think I'm just looking for an excuse to spend money.   

Yeah, if you're not planning to play live, you can get better results on recordings using a good mic and pre. That's what I would spend the money on. and actually; I've had good results mic'ing acoustic guitars or running the pickup to an acoustic guitar amp and mic'ing it - but the mics used for sound reinforcement would generally be different than one that you would select for recording.