Graphtech Ghost Pickups Installation saga

[bpmorton777]

I would love to put one of these in the build im working on but have been turned off a little by the price of the system and the ambiguity on the ghost wesite. If i may ask, how much did the pickups and electronics cost and what exactly did you have to buy to get it towork?

Brian

 

[tfarny]

about $190 for the saddles and the preamp.  You need that plus maybe a new pot ($5), and a 9v battery.  I don't have, but would recommend, the switch ($20?). So yeah, it's the price of a cheapo acoustic. If you don't have a lot of space in your control cavity, I'd suggest going for those mini pots, they're tiny. If you've putting it on something with a normal fender tremolo or hardtail, you can buy from stew mac, they're a great shop. If you have a tele or non-standard string spacings, etc, graphtech sells the saddles in a variety of shapes and string spacing (you can get them in a wilkinson tremolo format too). I bought mine from musician's friend 'scratch and dent' and saved a bit of cash (it's in perfect shape, couldn't find any 'dents'), but I don't like the way MF packages their stuff at all and wouldn't recommend ordering fragile parts like that from them. The parts were just rattling around in a big badly-taped box with one piece of brown paper as 'filler'! Whoever was trashing MF on this board a while back had a point.

 

[Alfang]

Does the preamp need to be used? or is that mainly for mixing the signal with the normal pups?

I wanna try these things someday, But I dont wanna buy the preamp board if I really dont need it

 

[tfarny]

They say the preamp is optional but recommended, but I think you need it, unless you want to wear one of those belt-clip preamps. For one, you wouldn't have any of the controls (volume, piezo / mag switching options) without the preamp and I would imagine you'd get a poor quality signal (the current generated by these things is beyond small). It's the same exact deal as with an acoustic-electric, the same technology, just embedded into saddles instead of under an acoustic's bridge. Also, I got a good look at a Fishman intregrated setup - the saddles are built into a complete, finished bridge, and it does look way easier to install, and the parts looked like they were quality. Preamp was about the same size as with the graphtech. Definitely look into that system too.

 

[ddpoolman]

I own a Schecter E/A and here is the trick. Your not looking for a perfect acoustic sound, you want something better. The first key is a Zoom A2 acoustic effects box. Some other brand may work but this is what I use and it works Great.
Get yourself a nice fairly conservative acoustic sound.  It will sound just OK. Now blend in just a very little of the electric. Not too much. Suddenly if fills out and sounds fantastic. Set up a specific electric sound with your multi effects box just to enhance the acoustic.
The results are amazing. Somehow the electric fills in the highs and lows (not too much), but it still sounds acoustic.

 

[rapfohl09]

Now I really don't want to be a forum snob here, but I will point out that I think it is hilarious that your first post is on a post that is days from having not been posted in for 6 years.