GOACOUSTIC PICKUP SYSTEM
On Vintage Retrofits
There is a particular kind of guitar owner for whom all of this matters in a specific and sometimes agonizing way: the person who owns a great acoustic instrument and also wants to play it in public.
A pre-war Martin or a fine early Gibson carries a voice that took decades to develop. The wood has settled. The top has opened in ways that no amount of aging in a case will replicate. These instruments are valued, often substantially, because they sound the way they do. Through most pickup systems, though, that voice condenses into something generic. The distinctions that justify the guitar, and the price paid for it, fold into the same amplified acoustic profile that a much more ordinary instrument would produce.“ There are people who just want to put a vintage guitar in a vault,” Shaw says.“ They have no interest in playing it. Our system is not for them. For those who want to play a vintage Martin or a vintage Gibson, they really do need our system to let that unique character, that intrinsic value of that guitar, come across on stage. You don’ t want to step out there with your amazing Martin and sound no better than a guy with a modern guitar plugged in. What’ s the point of having the vintage guitar then if it doesn’ t shine through in your performance, in your art?”
The good news is that the modification required to install the Go Acoustic system is minimal: two small holes drilled in the saddle slot, the endpin replaced with an output jack, and the saddle shaped and fitted in the normal course of setup. The visual result is indistinguishable from a standard bone saddle installation. Shaw offers an additional perspective, pointing out that neck reset a guitar might need is a condition of keeping it in proper playing condition regardless of what pickup goes in.“ If you want to play the guitar, you’ re going to have to do that anyway. That’ s not really an issue with us. Acoustically and aesthetically, the guitar is unchanged. Electrically, though, it is transformed.”
The argument against modification in vintage instruments has always rested on the premise that originality is the primary measure of worth. McGill challenges that framing, drawing on the history of one of the market’ s most respected dealers:“ Walter and Christy Carter set up their shop and got away from the idea that everything had to be perfectly unaltered, original, because players play them and they alter them. They represented these guitars as having value despite the alterations, which actually expanded the intrinsic value of vintage guitars. And they were hugely successful doing that.”
The question McGill returns to is whether drilling a couple of holes in a saddle slot actually diminishes the value of an instrument whose worth is rooted in something far more layered than its physical originality. His answer:“ The guitar is still the guitar.”
COLLECTIBLE GUITAR | 117