NSHPD = New Soundhole Pickup Day!
Hello all. Long time, no review! Yes, this once prolific reviewer of gear and guitars is slowing down these days. Why, you ask? Well, quite frankly, I am by and large extremely happy with my current stable of guitars and the gear I use to amplify them! That said, I did pick up a gorgeous Martin D-1 custom all-mahogany dread back in December with the plan of that guitar being used solely for acoustic only playing. But then I came to love the guitar so much that I wanted to install some sort of pickup system in it to be able to use it at least on rare occasion for open mics or very low-end 'fun' gigs.
I went through several soundhole pickup systems: The LR Baggs M80, the Schertler AG6 with S-MIC and finally the DiMarzio Black Angel. All three were pretty good, in fact very close in overall tone. I was hoping that the M80 or AG6 with their internal mics would give the tone that 'airiness' that is lacking in soundhole pickup systems. But in the end they really didn't give it enough to justify the one thing I truly wanted - a passive system. So I settled on the Black Angel. It's a great pickup for sure but there's just no getting away from that 'electric' guitar sound that all soundhole pickups I've ever played seem to have.
A short while back I decided to give the HFN Schatten a try. It's totally passive with a small footprint and light weight and it's also relatively inexpensive. I also liked that it was easy to install and uninstall (no glue) so I could move it around and try different positions. It was awful. Just over the top harsh, brash, tinny and mid-forward tonally with NO low end whatsoever. I tried both the putty and tape install and I also tried moving the pickup around inside with no improvements. So I quickly abandoned that idea and planned to just go back to the Black Angel and leave well enough alone.
But something nagged at me. Back when I was thinking of trying out the Black Angel I did a lot of research on passive soundhole pickup systems. One that popped up on my radar was the K&K Double Helix Solo. There is a demo video on YouTube from K&K where the guy demo's it in a few configurations and the sound is incredible. Now, we all know how that goes - the tones they get from guitars, amps and pickup systems on demos from the companies themselves are always over-the-top awesome due to the high end production and signal manipulation that us regular guys can never achieve no matter how hard we try!
Still, the system was intriguing. First, it's a totally passive system with no batteries which I prefer. It's a magnetic soundhole pickup with hum canceling, dual-coil pickups with phase and tone switches. Plus, it's a K&K system which carries weight with me. Before deciding on the Black Angel I actually posted here on AGF Amplification and asked if anyone had ever owned, tried, used or even heard of the Double Helix. Nothing. Not a single reply. So I went with the Black Angel as there was a ton of feedback on that one.
The Double Helix has a bunch of things going for it and a few things against it. In the pro column is the K&K name, price ($159 new, street), it's passive, adjustable pole pieces, comes with fixed internal and external jack/cables and last but not least two position tone and polarity switches. In the con category was the lack of user feedback and, well, it's ugly. In all the photos online it just looks like an ugly pickup. The exposed top end is not symmetrical with the bass side tab being wider than the treble side and then they have a raised area on the first four pole pieces on the low end and then the B and high E are lower. Yes, this makes for those pole pieces to be lower from the rest like just about everyone does manually but it just looked odd.
But I decided to give the Double Helix a try and found one on Reverb used. The first thing I noticed was that the pickup is actually way more attractive than I thought. Or, at least it's not nearly as ugly as I initially thought. This is because the pickup is much smaller than I thought it would be. From the photos I expected the surface area to be on par with the Black Angel or the Sunrise pickups. But it's actually much closer to the Schertler AG6 or the Fishman Rare Earth. And with this smaller, more delicate surface footprint that odd shape and raised areas were more attractive and easy on the eye. So that really left the only con as the lack of user feedback.
I removed the Schatten HFN and installed the pickup which of course was very easy. The construction of the Double Helix is excellent quality with heavy cables like the Black Angel and heavy duty, professional grade connectors. There is an internal connector that allows for this system to be easily combined with the K&K Pure Mini if you desire. Once installed it was time for a test of the new pickup. My go-to initial test of any guitar and pickup system is how it performs directly into my Bose S1 Pro system. The Bose S1 Pro has very limited EQ with only a high and low dial and then there is a three-position ToneMatch switch with off, guitar, and mic positions. I typically set everything at the flat detents (including volume) and then play in all three TM positions.
Almost every pickup system I've tried (not counting the Cole Clarks) needs to have a lot of EQ help and the TM in either guitar or mic. So my expectations were quite low with the Double Helix. But it actually sounded pretty good right out of the gate in all three positions. It was definitely a little biased towards the trebels and sounded best with the the highs cut to 25% and the lows boosted to 75%. But at those levels it actually sound really nice. What it didn't have was the 'electric' sound that most sound hole pickups had. Well, that's not really true. I'd say instead that it had much less of that type of sound.
What was great was that I needed to do NO pole piece adjustments. With the B and high E poles already recessed a bit by design and the minor EQ tweaking that seemed to be more than enough. Unlike the Black Angel and the M80 which required me to screw the B and high E pole pieces either all the way in OR remove them completely and still have it be on the shrill end. With the Schertler AG6 I was completely reliant on EQ since their pole pieces are internal so there is no manual adjustment to be done if needed and believe me, it was needed!
Test two was to run the Double Helix through my EAE StompMix X6 mixer where I could really avail myself of some hardcore EQ tweaking with sweepable mids, compression, delay, reverb, chorus, gate, notch and everything else that excellent system as to offer. I'm happy to report that I was able to get an excellent tone out of the Double Helix. Not quite on par with that K&K YouTube demo but certainly one that I would be more than happy with to use at any paying gig and that says a lot. But I'm leaving one very critical, special feature out - the two position tone switch.
The Double Helix pickup system has a two-position phase switch which is not uncommon these days. My Black Angel has one. But there is also a two-position tone switch on the Double Helix. They call these two positions GLOSS and STEAM. The GLOSS position is great for strumming. It gives you a very even, bright and slightly subdued tone that should be used to tweak in your gain, EQ and volume for your strumming. Once that is dialed in, you move to the STEAM position and all I can say is WOW! Everything just comes alive! It's louder, more airy and there's just this depth and sweetness to the tone. This guitar is now a contender for use at open mics, if we ever have open mics again!
In summary I can say that I'm ecstatic that I went with my gut and gave this system a try. I really can't believe this soundhole pickup has gone under the radar for so long. If it didn't sound as good as it does I might have tried to add a K&K Pure Mini but quite frankly it does well enough by itself. Is it as good as the Cole Clarks? No, not even close. BUT, it's definitely one of the better single source, after market, non-proprietary pickup systems I've tried and I've tried a BUNCH. And it's definitely the best soundhole pickup system I've ever tried. So if you're in the market for a soundhole pickup system you should add this to your list of potential considerations. I'll post a few photos of it installed and maybe a comparison photo of the Black Angel and Schertler systems as well in a reply below.
The last thing I want to post is the YouTube K&K video demo that got me interested in the first place. The player demos the pickup alone in both GLOSS and STEAM modes and also with and without the K&K Pure Mini blended in as well as the K&K Pure Mini alone:
