[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING ACOUSTIC GUITAR EQUIPPED WITH THE DIMARZIO DP136]

OWEN O'MALLEY: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. I'm Owen O'Malley and we're taking a look at the DiMarzio Super Natural Plus magnetic soundhole pickup for acoustic guitars. It is a pretty easy-to-install pickup. You just basically slide it in under the strings and it'll fit in most guitars that have a sort of standard-sized soundhole around like 4 inches give or take about 1/4 of an inch. It's got these little foam things on the wings to keep it in place. It's got a cord running out of it, terminating in a 1/4" connection and it has just a simple volume control and six adjustable pole pieces, which is very important because any guitar is going to need some little adjustments, and as the strings get older, you're going to want to sort of compensate for the wound strings. I've adjusted this one a little bit. It does come with the hex wrench that you'll need to adjust the pole piece. And you can hear even [INDISCERNIBLE] -- I need to do a little bit more adjustment here because if you play sort of like single-note like arpeggios or you skip strings, you can start to hear the volume difference so it might take a little bit of calibration.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING ACOUSTIC GUITAR EQUIPPED WITH THE DIMARZIO DP136]

But I think it's a pretty nice sounding pickup. It's only $70, which sort of on the lower end or lower price range for magnetic soundhole pickups. I certainly prefer the sound to most transducer pickups that come pre-installed in guitars, even this one. This is the Takamine EF341C which I got this about 12 years ago for $1000 -- $900, now it's like $1300, and I prefer the sound of this $70 pickup to the transducer pickup that was installed in this, and of course, you know, if you're guitar doesn't already have a transducer system or a preamp installed, you can just throw this guy in and it sends out a signal that's probably not as loud as an instrument signal like a guitar or bass but definitely a useable signal to a direct box or whatever you got. Uh.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING ACOUSTIC GUITAR EQUIPPED WITH THE DIMARZIO DP136]

Here's the volume control right here, just on the bottom face that's on the faceplate of this thing. This faceplate by the way is not real wood. It's a clever laminate...

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING ACOUSTIC GUITAR EQUIPPED WITH THE DIMARZIO DP136, ADJUSTING THE VOLUME]

...but a pretty decent volume range coming out of there. That's basically it. It's a very simple pickup but a pretty good sounding pickup I think.

[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING ACOUSTIC GUITAR EQUIPPED WITH THE DIMARZIO DP136]

It's the DiMarzio Super Natural Plus. I'm Owen O'Malley, and you're watching Gearwire.Com.