Bear Meadow offers a piezo-electric acoustic pickup built to Bear Meadow specifications by Fishman Transducers.
We chose Fishman, the originators of piezo-electrics for musical instruments, to design our pickups because of their transparency. You can lean into the strings and not sense a point where the sound has lost its acoustic, "woody" nature and "gone electric." The clear, sweet crispness of the Bear Meadow dulcimer is preserved throughout the pickup's dynamic range.
This is an under-the-saddle mounted discrete element device, with elements arranged so that you can arrange the strings on the nut and saddle in 4- or 3-string configurations, or 3-string with double melody course, with the same responsiveness from the electronics. Here the pickup element is shown during testing.
This is a view of the transducer as installed. Notice that the lead length is kept very short, so there is minimal stray pick-up, and no chance for the lead wire to rattle against internal structures.
The output jack for the pickup is mounted in the tailblock, at the end of the dulcimer. The pickup is a passive, discrete element device, so there is no need for on-board batteries, pre-amps, or controls. Just plug right from the dulcimer into your amplifier.
See the Price List for more information.
Fishman Bear Meadow
Acoustic Pickup