Seymour Duncan SA-6 Mag Mic Active Acoustic Guitar Pickup

I play clubs, open mics, coffee houses, churches and farmer's markets, almost always with amplification. I have an old Guild arch-back dreadnaught that was fitted with a first-gen GHS condenser mic. It's gotten noisy over the years, and always had a bit of distortion when my ham-fisted strumming would kick in. Overdue for replacement. So, I installed the SA-9 per the included instructions, and installation went okay. I'll have to go back in and install the wiring anchors as I wanted to see if I liked the tone first. I then ran it through a modeling amp, and monitored on headphones. The pickup by itself sounded pretty much as expected. Convenient, but not the kind of acoustic tone I was hoping for with this pickup/mic combo. To its merit, it seems to handle heavy strumming without distortion, and I suppose it will work well when feedback is a potential issue. I then rolled on the mic, and the sound got more complex, rich and pleasant to my ears. Success! I'm pleased.

I have a 1936 00017 Martin that I play live. Never had good sound until now!! The sound is fantastic and I didn't have to drill a bigger hole in the strap hole. I can't stop playing it. Because the sound hole is smaller on this guitar I had to grind down one side of the Mag that sticks out in order to get it in. It didn't affect anything. It's the only great sounding pickup I could find to do get in this guitar. The mic and the volume adjustments are really easy to adjust even when I'm playing!!

I don't know if this is a product issue or installation issue, but this pickup kept falling out of my sound hole until I had to tighten it down myself. Now one of the wires has come loose inside my acoustic and it clangs around in transport. I'm going to have it removed the next time I swap out my strings.