K&K Pure Western Mini Passive (Steel String)

K&K Pure Western Mini Pickup Sys.

Our bridge plate guitar pickups win Gold in Acoustic Guitar's 2008 & 2009 Player's Choice Awards!

The Pure Western Mini is a passive system for steel string guitar, with three pickup heads and an endpin jack. It is a transducer system only and does not include a battery or on-board electronics. Don't be fooled by the sound of some competitors' "thin sounding" passive systems--the Pure Systems are definitely different. They sound full and rich and have sufficient output to drive most amps and PA systems directly!

We recommend the Pure Western Mini pickups for all acoustic guitars as a first choice. Direct installation with superglue is required for optimum performance but the system is still removable without damaging the guitar (you may damage the pickup though).

This pickup system will fit ANY steel string acoustic guitar! It features super balanced, flat sound transmission, warm woody tone without any quack and superior dynamic range all over the guitar's frequency spectrum. This pickup won the silver medal in the 2006 worldwide readers' poll of Acoustic Guitar Magazine. Our customers tell us that the Pure Western's output is louder than any other passive pickup on the market.

What are the advantages of the Pure pickups over undersaddle pickups?

The special Pure surface transducers transmit a significant portion of the soundboard because they are not as close to the strings as an undersaddle pickup. An undersaddle pickup mostly amplifies the sound made by the guitar strings. There will not be much difference in sound if you play a cheap $50 guitar or a handcrafted $5,000 instrument. With the Pure Western pickups, not only are each of the three transducers designed to pick up a specific string pair, but they also "listen" to the sound of your soundboard. The transducer elements are not under pressure and therefore do NOT sound percussive or harsh or quacky no matter if you play hard or soft. The Pure Western reproduces all strings nicely balanced. Undersaddle pickups often have problems with string-to-string balance. Unlike undersaddle pickups which passively often sound thin and trebled-only, the passive Pure Western puts out a nicely balanced, warm, full range signal.

Some disadvantages of undersaddle pickups:

• Hard, percussive tone, because it is under high pressure.
• Picks up mostly strings and hardly any sound from the soundboard.
• Chance of unbalanced individual string-loudness can result in work-intensive balancing procedure.
• Needs special preamp to compensate for the hard sound.