HFN - Acoustic/Steel String Pickup (Passive)

     The HFN is designed to give you a full, rich sound and will reproduce exactly what your guitar sounds like.  Along with being simple to install, these pickups exhibit excellent feedback rejection and good string to string balance. All HFN's are designed to be used with a preamp - for best results, the HFN passive may be paired up with one of our outboard preamps.

     The HFN is available in two different base lengths. The regular HFN which fits virtually all guitars and the HFN 'Short' which fits Double and Triple '0' guitars and those guitars with very limited space between the 'X' bracing.

Detailed spec's for the HFN and HFN 'Short' are in the Technical section

Sound Clips:  Clip 1     Clip 2     Clip 3

Technical

     The HFN series of pickups utilizes an elegant combination of materials: 3D printed ABS for its main structure and arching along with a light weight brass shell for its noise shielded piezo unit. Total weight of the pickup is a very light 0.2 ounces (7 grams). It will not affect the acoustic sound of the instrument when not in use.
     The HFN will fit virtually any X braced steel string acoustic guitar whether it has a pin bridge or not. The only hole that needs to be drilled is for the endpin jack.

     The pickup is designed to allow it to flex and move along with the soundboard of the instrument. There is a certain amount of flex built into the arching of the pickup base and as well there is both some flex allowed and some isolation from the soundboard provided by the 3M VHB mounting tape.
     Utilizing a single piezo sensing element that comes into contact with the soundboard of the guitar through the 'feet' of the pickup base allows for several things. First, the HFN is able to sample from more than one spot and to sample those spots across a span of time. Second, since we are able to do all this with just the one element, the chances of creating mechanical phasing issues caused by having to use more than one sensing element is eliminated.

Installation Instructions: HFN (passive) pdf

HFN spec's pdf             HFN 'Short' spec's pdf

Amplification

    The HFN series of pickups was designed to be used with a preamp. They will generally work quite decently without one when plugged into a good quality guitar amp. However, they will work better and the sound will be enhanced by using an outboard preamp.  Note that a preamp will be needed for use with a mixer or P.A. system.