Dean Markley ProMag

I purchased a new Larrivee L-03 acoustic in late summer of 2009 and decided that I, for some inexplicable reason, needed a pickup for it. However, I only had a budget of about $50. The only thing I could get within that price range was the Dean Markley Pro Mag. It's basically a single coil pickup that slips into the soundhole of your acoustic guitar and from there, a long cable with a 1/4" plug on the end of it protrudes out so that you can plug it right into an amplifier.

There are no controls for this pickup whatsoever. No volume, no tones, no equalization sliders, etc. All adjustments for the sound or output level coming from the pickup have to be done from the amp, and while it's nice not to have to drill into the guitar to install controls, not having ANYTHING to adjust is a major pain. Another problem was that I didn't have the budget for a proper acoustic amplifier or sound system to run into for a purer signal, so I had no choice but to run into electric amps. This produced a pretty terrible sound, but even when I was later able to try it through a Fender Acoustasonic Junior amplifier, it really didn't sound much better.

The tones from this pickup could be characterized as anything but acoustic sounding. It basically sounded like a very dead, muffled, and generally un-natural tone that was not pleasing to the ear. The closest comparison I have is plugging an electric guitar into a cheap, small amplifier, using the neck pickup and rolling the tone completely off. Basically a dead sound that has no brightness or overtones. This isn't helped by the fact that it has no controls to adjust it... so what you see is what you get. Not impressive as an acoustic pickup at all... it made my $1,000 Larrivee sound like a $100 guitar from Wal-Mart when it was plugged in.

In closing, this is a terrible example of an acoustic pickup. It's like putting a blanket over your guitar to completely deaden the sound, and then, just like a blanket, this pickup has no controls to adjust your tone, so again what you see is what you get. I (very fortunately) managed to sell this pickup for the $50 I paid and learned my lesson...

I have been using the Dean Markley Promag Single Coil acoustic guitar pickup for about 3 years now. It definitely comes in handy for those who like to play live and would rather not shell out the cash for an acoustic-electric guitar. I use it with my Takamine and it works great. I like the fact that it's easy to use and it's generally pretty responsive to dynamics. Unlike other pickups of this nature, the pickup slides into the sound hole rather easily, and has cushions on the both ends of it so that it does not scratch the wood of the guitar, or the pickup itself. One drawback of the pickup is that due to its size, it is not able to achieve the variety of timbres that a smaller pickup would be able to do. This is due to the fact that the size prevents the user from moving it around to different parts of the sound hole. For some players, this might be a deal breaker; for me, it really isn't a big deal as I get the sound I need from it regardless. The main complaint I have with it is that the tone that comes out of it is not quite as good as that of an acoustic-electric. However, for most live settings, this pickup is more than sufficient, at least for amateurs. I've never gotten a tone I couldn't live with out of it. I have tried some other models, and I honestly liked this one the best. It was a little expensive, but for the price it was absolutely fair. I would honestly have to say that there is not much of a better choice than this pickup out there in terms of competition, at least not amongst those in the price range of the Dean Markley.

I tried it for a week and it was the first time I tried a micro rosette ...
What I liked most: price, aesthetics (more or less)
The quality / price: € 60 for same, it did not work!
Fixing: more than questionable: no attachment system, it will "slip" under the strings in the rose, it is easy to set, for sure! But suddenly it moves too easily in all directions and therefore moves with the sound too!
When at last we play with a level on a chair bein there, it's worse!
Psychics, mediums and psychics a little, although he managed to well messed up my guitar.
We can not remove the cable, so you end up with 3 meter cable to carry around systematically, and therefore can not replace it (mini jack, auxiliary ...) except with an old soldering iron! !
Anyway: back to the store quickly! So I continue to look ... So I would put more expensive!