Dean Markley Pro Mag Plus Acoustic Guitar Single Coil Pickups

I have been using the earlier version of this mic professionally for several years and never had any problems with it. It has good tone and is easy to put in place or remove without damaging my guitars. I needed a new pickup, having given mine to a friend. This system is an appreciable improvement. The company has kept the best aspects of the earlier versions, such as tone, mounting system, etc., and added the plug/clip assembly at the patch side. This does keep the cord in place and even adds a layer of protection against the accidental dropping of the guitar if the strap were to slip off the end button. The heavy plastic fixture at the end of the pickup mount slid over the strap and holds it securely on the button.The price is reasonable and the reliability is consistent. This is an easy recommendation to make.John M. Spafford, author, When the Clock Strikes Dead (Jud Carson Mysteries), Dead Deutsch (Jud Carson Mysteries)

This sounds great through my old tube amp setup. Poor mounting design requires additional foam at times to remain secure. Worth the effort for the price and sound quality.

The pickup is titled as an “Active” device, but in reality there is no active about it. No battery or power source. I discovered what this meant when it did not work on certain sound systems. A guitar with the built in preamp/equalizer/tuner worked fine. However, It works great as a passive device. Clean sound across all strings, easy to install, easy to connect to sound system.

This pickup has a good physical design and is manufactured well. The sound is very thin and the output is extremely weak and so it should be used with a preamp or sound modeler to be totally useful. I bought two of these and put one on a Gibson J200 and one on an imported Fender 12 string and the output from both pickups was so low that a tc Helicon modeler with tuner wouldn't activate steadily enough to even tune the guitars. I even tried mounting the unit so close to the strings that they touched it when fretting high notes, and it still didn't have the output to activate the tuner long enough to tune a single string. I had been using a $15 HDE pickup on these guitars and thought that I would upgrade to something that had so many good reviews. What a total disappointment. The HDE pickup has much better frequency reproduction (lows and highs) and has enough electrical output to activate my tuners even when the strings are lightly plucked.The Markley pickup produces a very tinny, metallic sound even when adequately amplified. Frankly, it bears no resemblance to the sound of an acoustic guitar. It's more like a very poor quality hollow-body electric. After 45 years of playing just about every kind of guitar and amplification system I would have to recommend that you search out something better than this for amplifying an acoustic guitar. I love the convenience of Amazon, but the majority of the reviews for this product were incomplete and in my opinion incorrect. I should have gone down to the music store and researched pickups before purchasing--unfortunately I believed the reviews. Shop around and if your local music store has some demo units you should try to find a product that performs better than this one. It's a shame really. The design and construction are so well done. It's like a Ferrari without an engine--looks great in the driveway but can't get you down to the grocery store.

This is a high impedance output device, up near the 1 megohm range, meaning a fairly low peak-to-peak voltage output down in the millivolt range. Most modern guitar pickups are fairly low impedance, having an output voltage in the 2V peak-to peak range and about 1K ohms impedance - and the modern amplifiers are also adapted to the newer hum-bucking pickups. I like this as there are times where I can not mic the guitar and this gives me a viable alternative for being able to amplify the guitar as needed. But please note this, it will have a very low output voltage that will not have a lot of output even at maximum input gain, producing a lot of noise with most modern amplifiers. I have opted to use an in-line preamp that is turned on when a guitar cord is plugged into the output and has a potentiometer to set the level as needed. Unfortunately, the preamp cost me more than the pickup, but I like the fact that the pickup has a fairly good range and over all tone quality that does not color the sound of the guitars I use it with. The preamp I use is also neutral in its dynamic range making it possible to use either the amp or mixing board to equalize the tone of the instrument. There are better pickups out there, but I like the fact that this attaches and detaches very quickly and does not mar the finish on my acoustic guitars with round sound holes. My preamp has about 1500 hours life on a single 9V alkaline battery.

Works better than expected, sounds great. The only drawback was the female plug. When you plug a cable into it and move around it shorts out. I tried many different solutions to make the connection better but finally just cut the plug off and soldered a cable with male plug to it, problem solved. Also the sponge material that holds it in place does not hold it securely for long.

Good sound, and easy to use. Nothing more could be wanted.

I’ve bought two Dean Markely pickups (one ebony and one maple). They have good sound, but the wiring sucks. Both have had super loud static with the slightest touch. The ebony one I received had a foot of cable with a female jack, despite the picture showing a longer cable and male jack.Also when I received the ebony one, it came a little rough, like they didn’t sand the woodWouldn’t recommend, the fishman acoustic pickup (a cheaper one I forgot which) I bought 5 years ago still works better than this one did in a month.