Help with a unique pickup setup

Yea, it does look odd, probably not great on wood day in and day out, and yes, those Taylor systems are a bunch of work and not worth it. IMHO
For decent sound you may have to save and lay out some cash. Nice to plug and play
and not worry about it. SD and baggs has a nice sound cover stretch one. I love the K&K minis., but, that is me.
Red eye into mixer.

 

My bandmate had one..really big footprint..and a lot of tweaking..on the unit and then at mixer...
too much work..and..the final result was not that great ..I did not think..
Glad tape is ok..

 

I play in a house band, weekly gig, where the house band opens for each guest artist. I see a lot of acoustic acts coming through.

I've heard many Taylor guitars, a number that sounded not very good and the rest sounded either fine or really good. My guess it that it may take some work and/or another person to listen to it to help make it sound good. Some folks think it's just plug and play, and that's not necessarily a good choice.

I've seen a fair number of the Red Eye boxes - they're come from a company in Austin and maybe the Austin folks around here know more about it. For the most part, everyone that I've seen using a Red Eye had a great sound - but most of them were touring professionals who really cared out their sound. I don't make any claims for their product, but the results seem to be pretty good, IMO.
https://www.fire-eye.com/

Others that I see a lot of: L.R. Baggs DI's (usually the Venue or the Para DI) and a few Fishman rigs. These all seem to work fine, as well.

A friend of mine who is killer guitar player uses an Aguilar Tone Hammer bass preamp - it sounds great, too - one of the reasons he picked that was a blow-out deal he got on it from a friend at a music store. By coincidence I use a pre-amp DI by Ashdown - but also because I got a really good deal on it.

I see plenty of folks use a pickup system with microphones and some of them sound good, but seems like it's more trouble than it's worth.

The folks who use the K&K pickups swear by them. I use an L. R. Baggs expression and it works for me, because 90% of the time, I'm using it in a band and I'm not trying to go for the ultra high-fidelity, sounds just like my acoustic dry thing. I just want it to be heard in the mix with a heavy-plucking bass player.

Good luck!

 

+ + Red eye
imho

 

.

I did an experiment with my acoustic that I ended up hard wiring in.

I took a regular Strat single coil and mounted it in a thin strip of wood that I attached to the bottom lip of the sound hole to get the pickup as close to the neck as possible. Then I ran shielded cable from the pickup to the output jack strap pin I bought. Then I just plug that into the regular amp (with a pre-select setting that mimics a piezo and acoustic amp sound). Or I just rock it. Sounds a lot like a Strat when cranked up on regular amp settings.

I also experimented with a Tele where I stuck an acoustic under the saddle piezo pickup under the steel bridge about where the saddles were and ran that to a toggle switch to use regular or the acoustic pickups. Needed a small pre-amp but made the Tele sound like an acoustic.

.

 

Yea, that big box floor unit thing.