Fig. 1 — The L.R. Baggs M1 Active is one of several modern magnetic soundhole pickups that offer handy features and superior performance compared to older designs.
A magnetic soundhole pickup makes a nice alternative to installing an under-saddle pickup in your acoustic guitar. Today’s soundhole pickups perform and sound much better than in decades past, so if you’ve written them off based on their old rep, it’s worth keeping an open mind and doing some research on modern options.
One of my clients wanted a pickup installed in his 2004 Martin D-28 that would not acoustically change its tone. Since under-saddle pickups can and do affect a guitar’s acoustic properties, I suggested a soundhole pickup.
After discussing different models, we decided on a L.R. Baggs M1 Active pickup (Fig. 1). Because the M1 has a built-in preamp, you can plug your guitar directly into a P.A. or acoustic amp and control your level with an onboard volume dial. Powered by a lithium watch battery, the M1 Active is a dual-coil humbucker designed so that one coil senses the strings and the other responds to the guitar’s physical resonance. Six adjustable pole pieces let you balance the output of each string—a handy feature that’s lacking in many older soundhole pickups.
Tip: Before you purchase a pickup, measure your guitar’s soundhole and check the manufacturer’s specs to confirm that the pickup fits your guitar. Soundholes are typically 4" in diameter, but they can vary.
My client wanted to use an endpin jack. To install it, I knew I’d first need to bore out the endpin hole. This operation has to be done carefully, so let’s look at each step. (While these instructions specifically reference the Baggs pickup, the procedure for installing other soundhole pickups is essentially the same.)
Removing the endpin.
Fig. 2
Because this D-28 had its original endpin, I began by removing it from the body. In most cases, you can simply twist the endpin out with your fingers (Fig. 2). But if the endpin is glued in, you may have to carefully use a pair of pliers to remove it. In extreme cases, you might have to cut off the endpin flush to the body and use a drill bit to remove the remaining section. Luckily, the endpin on this D-28 came out easily, so I didn’t have to use pliers or a drill.
Reaming the endpin hole.
Now I was ready to bore out the hole to accommodate the endpin jack that comes prewired to the M1 Active harness. I used an endpin jack reamer from Stewart-MacDonald (stewmac.com). This tapered tool attaches to a drill and has a stepped ream configuration that provides a very clean, precise bore. It will bore a hole from 15/32" up to 1/2" in diameter.
Fig. 3 — Using an endpin jack reamer from Stewart-MacDonald (stewmac.com) to enlarge the endpin hole.
In the past, guitar techs would use a spade bit and hope the hole was symmetrical and didn’t tear up the finish. Spade bits can slip and cause damage, and it’s difficult to keep them perfectly straight as you drill, so the endpin hole can end up crooked. With this reamer, you don’t have to worry about damaging the finish or tearing up wood around the hole. Also it’s easy to keep the reamer straight as you slowly drill (Fig. 3), so the hole ends up clean and accurate. This is the best tool I’ve found for this type of project.
After reaming the endpin hole, vacuum out any sawdust and debris from inside the guitar. It’s always good to keep the guitar’s interior clean.
Installing the endpin jack.
Before you install an endpin jack like this one, be sure to test the hole to be sure the jack fits correctly. The jack should be snug, but not so tight that you have to force it into the hole. If the hole feels too small, ream it out a bit more. Be patient and go slowly—never be in a hurry when drilling holes into a guitar!
Fig. 4 — Install the rear nut and lock washer before mounting the jack from inside the body.
The next step is to install the rear nut and lock washer (Fig. 4) before mounting the jack into the hole from inside the body. To help with this tricky operation, insert a Phillip’s head screwdriver through the hole from the outside to help guide the jack into place. Slide the jack along the screwdriver shank until you can grab the jack from the outside and pull it into place.
Fig. 5 — (left) After adding the external washer and nut, check the available threads as the jack protrudes out of the endpin hole. Will they accommodate the screw-on strap-button collar? Fig. 6. (right) The strap-button collar should be flush with the end of the jack.
Once it’s in place, check how much of the jack protrudes from the hole. Add the external washer and nut (Fig. 5), and then make sure there are enough accessible threads to grip the screw-on strap-button collar. It should be flush with the end of the jack (Fig. 6).
With the external washer, nut, and strap-button collar installed, the jack should be tight and not wiggle. If the jack is still loose, reach inside the guitar, remove the jack, and add a few turns to the interior nut and lock washer. Once the jack lines up correctly and is flush to the strap-button collar, remove the collar and tighten the outer nut. Finally, reinstall the collar.
I don’t recommend adding any glue or adhesive to the threads. This can cause a lot of damage and aggravation if you need to replace the endpin jack. This type of jack is designed to be tightened and loosened from the outside of the guitar. Adding adhesive interferes with the process and can cause problems down the road.
Installing the soundhole pickup.
Fig. 7 — The endpin jack comes prewired to a harness that plugs into the M1-Active.
Before mounting the M1 Active, I inserted the 3.5mm plug at the other end of the endpin jack harness into the pickup’s output jack (Fig. 7).
Fig. 8 — Gently tighten the pickup mounting brackets until they’re snug. Don’t overdo it!
Two brackets on either side of the pickup secure it in the soundhole. To make it easier to slide the pickup into the soundhole without damaging the finish, I loosened these brackets by turning their screws counterclockwise. After positioning the pickup in the soundhole—advanced slightly toward the neck—I gently tightened the brackets until they were snug (Fig. 8).
Tip: When you install a magnetic soundhole pickup, double-check that it’s truly secure. You don’t want it to fall into the body while you’re performing. That said, to avoid marring the finish or crushing the soundhole wood, don’t overtighten the mounting brackets.
Adjusting the pole pieces.
Fig. 9 — Adjusting the pole pieces with a hex wrench.
This is the last step, one that lets you tweak a modern mag pickup to your playing style—something you can’t really do with an under-saddle pickup.
The M1 Active typically ships with the 2nd-string pole piece removed, but included in the packaging. (This is because the B string tends to be much louder than the rest.) I recommend not installing it unless you really need it to balance the volume. The rest of the pole pieces are easy to adjust using the included 3/32" hex key.
First, make sure that the volume control is turned up all the way. To adjust the volume for each string, simply turn your hex key clockwise to lower the pole piece or turn your hex key counter-clockwise to raise it. Only raise the pole pieces a little at a time, and then test the volume by playing through an amplifier. It’s not necessary to raise them a lot—only about one full turn.
I usually lower the 6th-string pole piece flush to the top of the pickup, then adjust the rest of them to match sonically (not physically). You’ll probably find that the pole piece for the 3rd string is closest to the strings. Once all the strings have equal volume, you’re ready to perform or record with your new soundhole pickup.
[Updated 2/16/22]
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Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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