Im planning of getting some guitar(classical) or bass(electric) and was thinking about the possibility to install electric bass picup to my currect acoustic bass and get proper electric sound from the bass that way. But i got no idea if it would work at all.

Another thing with this is that i was wondering if this sort of modification would even work, i could put the pickup on the preamp of the current piezo mic, making the pickup active that way.

Would this work at all, and if it would, would the pickup work fine if i would just wire it where the piezo pickup is wired atm? Also recommendiations for pickup are welcome. Was thinking something priced around 100€.

No, it wouldn't work. Electric guitar/bass pickups use magnets to pick up the vibrations of strings made of magnetic metals. Electric guitar strings are made of steel and/or nickel. Acoustic strings, when metal, are generally made of bronze, or sometimes bronze wrapped around steel.

Repurposing parts for things that they aren't intended for can be quite difficult, and to make it work effectively, you need to have a strong understanding of how the parts work.

fact

Okay, but some people say that some electric bass strings are better for acoustic than phosphor bronze(which im using now and which apparently doesent work with the pickups). Some reasonably high tension strings that are good for semi acoustic bass might give good enough acoustic sound on acoustic bass aswell, also i dont mind if i wouod lose a bit of acoustic volume, its not enough to play with guitar now either..

If i were to use electric strings, would there be any problems then?

And if i were to try this, i know i gotta find out some things about the parts work.

The pickups would pick up sound, but the body of the guitar is still built to resonate the sound acoustically, not for the pickups. It's not going to be a very good sound, likely very weak with minimal sustain. Consider how the builds of electric guitars sustain the sound - thicker bodies, heavier woods, maple tops, and all sorts of stuff affects sustain. It will be extremely difficult to get the type of tone you would want for acoustic stuff through this type of mods.

Yea, but there are semi acoustic bass guitars, which have pretty nice hallow sound on them, i was kinda expecting this mod giving similar sound, but more hallow tone. Also the wood on bass is quite thick, so its not like on acoustic guitars. Not to mention that company named shadow(and possibly some others) make acoustic guitar pickups that are inserted over sound hole.

Someone tested one on acoustic bass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVk7ZxB2BN0


Is there some real reasons you know why the sound would be crappier than with the shadow pickup? Or is this just some speculations you have about all this?

This post was edited by Antichrist- on Mar 7 2012 11:40am

I have an understanding of how guitars are built and I know how pickups work. Shadow pickups are built to be used with acoustics, they're not standard electric pickups. I don't know the technical details, but they wouldn't be a very popular option at $200 if there was a much cheaper substitute. Normal electric bass pickups will not give a proper sound on an acoustic bass, as you originally asked - it will give you a sound if there is magnetic metal in the strings (iron/steel/nickel/cobalt), but it's not going to be a desirable tone.

I searched the internets and found out that people have done this to acoustic guitars and it gives pretty nice soundwith humbucker PUs. What makes a bass guitar so different that it wouod give 'not desirable tone'? And what does this not desirable tone even sound like, what makes it not desirable?

This post was edited by Antichrist- on Mar 8 2012 11:17am