emfit film pickup

spookelele

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Anyone have any experience with this?

It seems b-band uses it, but I can't seem to find plugged in samples on uke. Manufacturer says it sounds more natural...but they would say that, right?

So.. anyone familiar with it?

Kala apparently has it in the newer electric travel tenor, but HMS vids are all acoustic.
 
I've been curious about the B-Band preamp and pickups as well.
Magic Fluke uses them in their solid bodies. You may be able to find a sound sample of one of their models.
 
Owned 2 (Kala travel electric tenor, Flea electric concert) and tried another in store (Mahalo Hano Elite concert)

The one in the Flea worked OK, but the ones installed on the Kala and the Mahalo sucked. Really really sucked. Unclear tone, bit of distortion.. tone is greatly underpowered for an active and major strings unbalance if you're unlucky (C string goes BOOM). I am not a fan, although the Magic Fluke Company have managed to find a way to make them work.

B-band's definition of "natural" seems to be "brittle, harsh" with not much sustain or body to the tone.
Furthermore, once you have a B-band system installed, you can't replace the piezo unit with a different one, as they use some kind of proprietary plug from the piezo film to the preamp.

The B-band website blames the poor output issues with with improper saddle setup on the uke. But I beg to differ. Other pickups are not as finicky installed on the same instrument. Search for "artec ukulele pickup" on eBay. They are some of the best piezo units I have used, and they're dirt cheap:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/331610291574

At least with the cheap "Belcat" or "UK-2000" system you find on cheap acoustic-electrics, you can replace the piezo unit with an Artec pickup, since their preamp uses the universal 2.5 plug.
 
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