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Hi
I need some advice on acoustic guitar pickups. I have a Yamaha F310 acoustic guitar and I would like to make it into an acoustic-electric, but not doing it that it costs me more than the guitar as then i may as well buy that kind of guitar.
So with minimal effort and cost, I am looking at using a pickup, but have no idea if I am wasting my time doing it. Something I can put in myself and just play. This has brought about many questions:
Do I still need an amp? So will I have wires I need to plug in
Which one is suitable for my guitar?
Please note I am a beginner so I don't know all the lingo and if I am doing the right thing. I got this guitar for about R1500 brand new, very affordable and I don't want to have to buy another guitar yet, just for this purpose.
I just want my guitar to be a little louder when I am jamming with music.
Any advice is appreciated

    Aloha,

    You will need a amp - in a pinch you can use the aux in of a hifi/surround sound system (slightly risky, can blow a channel). best is a acoustic amp of some kind (Ibanez do great small amps).

    Tons of choices in pickups from a stick on style (schaller oyster), soundhole style (seymour duncan woody) or fully installed (undersaddle piezo). Some undersaddle piezo's come with a mic as well to blend piezo and mic. There are more options, but these are common ones.

    I couldn't say which would suit you best - I'd probably get a 2nd hand guitar with a pickup pre-installed.

    V8 Thanks for the advice, I will check out your suggestions. Alternatively I can also look at an affordable electric guitar then I have one of each... lol....but before I get too ahead of myself, still trying to learn, got the basic chords and still struggling with the F, so I guess I should be focusing on that first.
    What I am doing is playing to the original songs, those that I can play of course and obviously would like to hear my own guitar a little more than the song, but also not have the song disappear that no one knows what I am playing (strumming not fingerpicking yet.....that is another challenge in my near future)
    But thanks again for responding, it at least gives some direction of what to look at.

    • V8 likes this.
    • V8 replied to this.

        Shyker No worries, we can all practice more ? - at least I could!

        Another option instead of a amp is a acoustic multifx - the cheap option is the Zoom A2 (2nd hand around R6-800). Then the risk to line-out to the hifi is far less. And also you can play on headphones. Though I see it doesn't have a aux in for your backing tunes - something similar with a aux-in would be what you are looking for.

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