Pickup: kk pure mini or lr bagg lyric? (2024)

Hi!
Just bought a new Larrivee OM03 guitar and want to put a pickup into it ! I have two pickups to choose from: kk pure mini and lr bagg lyric!

I want to buy the Fishman Loudbox mini for amp!

The price:

Lyric 35$ (instalation) +175$ (Pickup) = 210$
Pure mini 75$ (instalation) + 95$ (Pickup) = 170$

Dont know if it may help but I really like john mayer amplified acoustic tone!

Wich one should I buy?

Don't mind for the +40$ of the lyric even if its only a bit better than the pure mini!

Didn't vote... too many variables that haven't been stated... what type of places will you play? Solo, or in groups? What sort of sound pressure levels will you encounter?

Depending upon your answer to these questions (I'm sure I've forgotten some that are important), it may disqualify BOTH of those pick-ups, as neither one does a good job in a LOUD situation...

Other than that? I have the K&K PW Mini in my Goodall Grand Concert, and I like it a bunch (although I haven't gigged with it, just played it through my Bose L1 system. You don't NEED a pre-amp to plug the K&K in, but I wasn't happy with the tone of mine until I got a hold of the K&K PURE XLR pre-amp. Even using my Bose T1 Tone Generator/Mixer, with paarametric EQ and lots of ways to tweak the tone, it took a LOT of messing around to approximate anything I'd call a "good" acoustic tone. With the PURE unit, I hardly have to use the tone controls at all!

I have the Bagg's Anthem in both my 6 and 12 string "stage" guitars... both built by Mark Angus... I like the amplified sound from those pick-ups, however, they DEFINITELY caused a loss of volume (unplugged) and a tonal shift with the guitars, especially noticeable on the 6 string. I've played that Angus for over 30 years, so I noticed it immediately; if you just got the Larrivee, you may not notice a thing... The Lyric is a small microphone that affixes to the bridgeplate, similar to the Anthem system's True-Mic; I can not say which aspect of the Anthem (UST or mic) is the culprit in the unplugged sound's degradation...

I'd probably opt for the K&K IF you aren't playing out a whole lot... if you are gigging a bunch, then the Bagg's may be a better bet for you... again, depending on the requirements you have for your musical situation...

Schafrocks said:

Don't you have to have the K&K preamp for the impedance and it to sound right?

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No, you don't. I've run mine through different preamps and its always good. Even no preamp works OK.

Schafrocks said:

I don't know why I thought it but for some reason impedance comes to mind??

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because you're right, the impedance very much matters with passive piezo pickups.

it just happens that the K&K is unusual in that it sounds right into a rather low 1MΩ impedance, which most regular pedals and amps happen to have.

anyway, having heard both, the lyric is the more natural-sounding and definitely the easier to install of the two, and it has probably close to the same amount of feedback resistance if you have a band or two of good parametric EQ for it.

as Jseth points out, it's all about the application; if this acoustic is for fronting a band on loud stages, then you don't want either one.

TubeLuvr said:

Also, where can you get the Baggs Lyric for $175? Best price I've seen is $200.

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Perpetual 15% discount from most retailers and price match from the others.

I have a k&k pure mini installed in my Gibson CJ-165 (rosewood). I bought the external preamp from k&k as well, which is needed due to it being a passive pickup. It definitely provides a more woody/warm type of tone. It's crucial that you have a rosewood back and sides guitar to achieve the J Mayer sound.

Ive found that for live and recording purposes the pure mini system does not contain enough high end treble on it's own and shines a lot better when you mic the guitar as well.

http://www.guitaradoptions.com/kk-sound/

this is where i got my pure mini and XLR preamp. Also, 75 bucks seems very steep for the pure mini installation. My luthier didnt even charge me half of that. The endpin jack is really replacing the strap endpin. Aside from that it's just using adhesive to place the transducers.

Not knowing your playing situation (strumming/fingerstyle/both, drums/no drums, etc.) means I can't really make a suggestion.

I can, however, tell you that your comparison is apples to oranges. Those are two radically different sounds. Have you heard them both in person? Did you like them both equally?

Rob

stratboy01 said:

Also, 75 bucks seems very steep for the pure mini installation. My luthier didnt even charge me half of that. The endpin jack is really replacing the strap endpin. Aside from that it's just using adhesive to place the transducers.

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the right adhesive is superglue; have you worked with that stuff?

you're working utterly blind, placement is critical, the stuff sets in seconds and you get one chance to place it perfectly; it's more like defusing a bomb than installing a pickup.

$75 might be more of a "stress fee" than a "per hour" estimate.

Rob Sharer said:

I can, however, tell you that your comparison is apples to oranges. Those are two radically different sounds.

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well, to me they're in the same "category", pickups that come close to capturing a natural tone, at the cost of being fussy to EQ and feedback-prone at high volumes.

(as opposed to the other category of things like magnetic soundhole pickups and under-saddle pickups, things that you can crank without feedback but don't sound as "acoustic".)

HeeHaw said:

I'm going to vote for the k&k. I have a lyric in my d50 and it picks up every noise my guitar makes, also it sounds like its in a box, and not like all those YouTube videos.

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did you tweak the little brightness trimpot on it?

if it really does just sound bad, get up with baggs about exchanging it; i've actually encountered a couple defective lyrics, something very unusual with LR baggs stuff. maybe that mic is hard to "tune" or "calibrate" just right, so less-than-great ones might slip through?

a good lyric sounds very nice with a bit of judicious EQ, mostly knocking out the mids at the body resonance somewhere in the low hundreds.