Hexaphonic Pickup for a nylon-string instrument (not a guitar)

[miguel]

Hi,

I saw that Godin guitars had some custom L.R. Baggs hexaphonic pickups in their nylon-string guitars so I thought that in this forum I might find the answer I'm looking for.

I'd like to add hexaphonic pickups (and a 13-pin connector) to a charango. For those not familiar with the instrument, it's a nylon-string Andean instrument, as small as an ukulele, although it has 10 strings that go in pairs. It means that there are 5 pairs of strings "per note". This is what it looks like (size, tunning, etc.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charango#Tuning

And this is what it sounds like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV2JmWMj4-s

I was thinking to have one pickup per pair of strings, so it'd be 5 pickups and I'd like to have separate outputs for each (via 13-pin connector). Would that be possible with any L.R. Baggs pickup?

[Caleb_Elling]

Hey Miguel,
Sadly, the Godin Hex pickups are made to a very specific spec for their guitars, and the saddle height is not adjustable. On top of that, those hexaphonic pickups are currently only available to Godin, and not for retail sale or custom order. I'm hoping that we will have a retail version at some point, but that isn't a sure thing yet.

It might be tricky finding a MIDI (13 pin) processor too. Most of those tend to be pretty customized for specific applications. LR Baggs doesn't have any MIDI-equipped systems, aside from the Godin systems.

[miguel]

Hi Caleb, thanks for your reply.

It's not my intention to use a MIDI processor but just to process the strings separately. I can do that myself, so what I'm looking for now is just a pickup system that would allow me to pick the sound of every string (or every pair of strings) for that particular instrument. I'll take care of the rest.

Cheers,

Miguel

[Caleb_Elling]

Ok,
The non-adjustable nature of the Godin pickups would make them difficult to use on other instruments, but there are other Hex-style pickups out there from a few different companies.

If you find one that works for your instrument, let us know what you end up with. It's an interesting project.