schatten selmac pickup

Colin Perry

Just thought I would chime in. I have the schatten on my gitane, and it is the only acoustic pickup I have ever used that I actually liked. There is, and never will be a perfect replacement for a good condenser mic, but I feel this pickup is good enough to not distract me from the music. Although I love playing acoustic, I would much rather have a great electric tone, than a bad acoustic one. As for the DYN-G, I have never played through one, but I have seen other people using them, and I just don't find them to be very natural sounding. They sound sort of muffled and dead, and they have a very low feedback point.

Colin Perry

Also, I noticed no loss in acoustic tone after the pickup was installed. My luthier used the putty, but he also reccommended a permanent installation with epoxy, if I decided I liked it. I asked Micheal Collins, and the people at Schatten about this, and they both though it was a good idea.

Bob Holo

Whoah - Collin - Nice Epiphone.... (on your site)

the headstock looks like a 1934 or older... never seen a fingerboard like that on an Epi - The early Broadways had the big abalone chunks like that, but they didn't go to the edge of the fingerboard though that was particularly popular in Europe (especially France and as you're from Canada...) Was it given a new fingerboard by a French luthier or is that original?

Nice rig at any rate.

Colin Perry

Bob--

As far as I know it is all original. Everything looks untouched. I have often wondered that myself though, as all other broadways seem to have inlays like the late 20's L-5's. While I was looking to buy a broadway, I asked Joe Vinikow at archtop.com about one he had that had a nut width of 1 11/16. It was beautiful, but I was surprised to see an early epiphone that wasn't 1 3/4. His response was: The early epiphones vary surprisingly from model to model. That must be it.

Bob Holo

Yep, there was a transition period from "Luthier" to "Guitar Factory" for Epi Stathopoulo. By the time his kids took over - it was a small factory - and then after the Gibson sale it was a subsidiary of corporation.

My '44 Zenith was pretty much spot-on to spec, but my '38 Broadway has some points of uniqueness. They invented the frequensator in 1937 and then moved to truss rods on the majority of their line by 1939. That's a pretty good indication that they were going for consistency and volume of output and creating sources of strategic differentiation... which is indicative of what a company would do. (as compared to a small production luthiery building guitars for individual enthusiasts) That is not intended to be an insult to Epiphones made past 1940. I've played 1940's Epis that were great - and even some Gibson Epis that were great. However, I'm glad I got a prewar one early before the prices got silly. (in part we can thank Vinikow for that...)