K&K Company Blog

The introduction of the Progression naturally created a big buzz among the acoustic guitar players, especially the ones who are searching for very best sound.

Today I would like to post some additional info based upon discussions with players by phone and email.
First, what’s written about it on our website and in the Progression’s manual is really true and not just marketing blurb!

Let me go into detail here:
This tube preamp was specifically designed to compliment the Pure pickups.

I have always felt that the Pure pickups sound very true and natural, but if their sound is missing something compared to a really great mic, I think it is that their high-end response could be boosted.

To achieve this, we took advantage of one of the tubes’ biggest strengths, their natural and beautiful treble response (compared to solid state technology which tends to sound somewhat synthetic when trebles are boosted). Tubes can add that steel string “shimmer” and “silver” in an extremely elegant fashion. But please understand that this comes with a small trade-off: a slightly higher noise floor.
That’s actually why solid state technology overtook tube technology already decades ago. Plus in today’s digital world, players get more and more aware of every little amount of noise.
It is of course true, that in a recording situation noise is a concern. But in a live setting, in my opinion, a small amount of noise is usually not a factor.

Our Progression is built with plain and true tube technology. When designing it, we were EXACTLY after the above described elegant high-end response! We purposely went the old-fashioned way of hand wiring and adding no transistors at all in Progression’s tube stage .
Please keep in mind that ANY other studio-mic-tube-preamp on the market today is a hybrid circuit, where the tube is used for the lower frequencies only, but the high-end is processed by solid state components in order to satisfy today’s noise conscious customers. This technique, of course, does NOT provide the tube’s refined treble response!

In short, if you want to naturally enhance the high-end of your Pure pickup (similar to a condenser mic) and do not mind minimally increased noise, compared to a solid state preamp, the Progression is for you.

If you are not sure, you can always take advantage of our return policy and test the Progression at your home.  I  think this is an absolutely great unit, like the “icing on the cake” type of addition to the Pure pickups.

Thanks for reading, signing off now, the Dieter

I can’t believe I haven’t written for so long.

The Dieter ripped his achilles tendon when he tried out a new toy, a so-called trikke:

http://www.trikke.com/webmkt/full_size_air.html . Now, in private life, the Dieter is my husband, and now I have driver’s duty, too. The cast will stay on for a few months, but he is in good spirits.

A couple of special footer scooters, aka Dieter speeders, were built, so he gets around quite well.

Goes to show how crafty we can be in this company.

We also had a visit from Rich Osweiler of Acoustic Guitar Magazine, last week.

http://www.acousticguitar.com/

It was a lot of fun to show him around and talk shop. It is rare that we get a lot of visitors, as we are e a little out of the way here in Oregon.

But it is such a wonderful place, and we would not want to be anywhere else.

First of all, for all you out-of-staters, it is pronounced Orrygen.

Pretty sizable, as landmass goes, we have a population of less than 4 million, most of them over in the valley, in the  I-5 corridor, with Portland, Salem, Eugene/Springfield and Medford. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon

We are in Coos Bay, right on the Southern Oregon coast.

As a matter of fact, this is the so-called Oregon Bay Area, and with about 30,000 population, the biggest coastal town between San Francisco and Seattle.

http://www.coosbay.org/

When we decided to move the company here in 1995, from Bavaria, it was a gamble, but it all worked out so well, and I am so happy to be in this place.

I can see the bay when I look out my office window, and even though it rains quite a bit, I have come to love the rain. After all, everything is so green here most of the year and we get the most wonderful rainbows, like on the picture I took a couple of years ago, right across the street from the company compound.

Today I would like to announce the upcoming release of an improved version of the existing Mandolin Twin system. We were working with Austin Clark from clarkmandolins.com who went the extra mile to test several positions and mounting methods on one of his great instruments. He worked together with a high caliber player.
They found out that the very best sound was actually achieved with internal installation of both pickups placed just outside of the bridges feet, which means right next to the center of both f holes. These gladly are also the easiest spots to retrofit the pickups into the mandolin.

Austin wrote this: “I would recommend to luthiers who have trouble mounting their pickups here due to tone bar locations to either build the instrument with the offending tone bar 2-3mm more towards the middle to accommodate the width of the pickup or place the pickup right behind it. I have chosen to alter my design standard for tone bar location since these are the pickups I think have the best sound out there. Changing the position of the bar has not had any affect on the sound that I can tell.”

We are planning to introduce 2 new models which will replace the existing Mandolin Twin. One model for internal mount only - with endpinjack - and a second one with a carpenter jack (outside mounted jack with special clamp shown in the link with a violin pickup). The transducers remain the exact same ones as used in the existing Mandolin Twin.  The difference will be in the cable length and the way the cables are fastened inside the mandolin.

With the new upcoming carpenter jack model you do not have to drill a hole for the jack. The pickup cables will go from the jack into the treble F hole and the pickups are mounted inside. This option is great for anyone who wants the best sound but no hole or permanent alteration of his/her instrument.

It will be few weeks until we have them ready to go though, just wanted to let you know ahead of time.

Signing off, the Dieter.

Greetings, this is Dieter and today I’m going to give writing my first blog post ever a shot. The good thing is that I have a really exciting topic to write about.

At the end of last year, Jeff Lieberman contacted me with a rather unusual request. He wanted me to build a custom marimba pickup system for a “ballistic marimba”. He said that he was in process of fulfilling a project sponsored by Absolut Vodka, building a special marimba where small rubber balls are shot by individual canons, each one aimed onto one particular marimba bar which then plays the tone. This was designed to be interactive via the internet, so that a “player” at home could actually trigger the individual canons via his computer and watch the result on a life video at home. The K&K pickups would play the audio sound of the marimba bars.

Please check out the official ballistic marimba website, and watch the movie, too.

This is pretty typical for custom stuff that we at K&K have done or were involved with over the last 25 years. Lots of crazy ideas, projects, and products. The ballistic marimba is probably the most sophisticated one though.

To name some other “crazy” projects, K&K once had a product called the Hot Glove, a pair of gloves with trigger pickups sewn into the fingertips and cables running out through the players sleeve, then connected to a Midi drum sound module. Different drum-sounds were assigned to the individual fingertips. This way the player could play drums by tapping on all kinds of surfaces (like parts of his/her body, tabletops, doors, walls etc.; you get the picture).

Another project we were involved with was amplifying step dancers using Big Shot transducers.

And there was this bottle tree we once built for a trade show, 1 full octave of precisely tuned bottles with Hot Spot transducers attached, hanging on a rack, to be played with a mallet. Other projects involved amplifying sound sculptures, engine vibration measurements, language sound analyzing via a transducer close to the larynx and of course the “every day” K&K Custom Shop orders.

I guess that all those endeavors have widened my horizon in respect to pickup design and I am glad that we did every single one of those “crazy” projects.

Signing off,
The Dieter

So, it has been decided that K&K will have a blog.

And I am supposed to write the 1st entry. Well, let’s start with an introduction. The name is Karla, I am officially the CEO, and effectively in charge of human resources, financials, administrative decisions, as well as all things that might go wrong or are kind of dicey, like writing the first entry on a blog.

We will have 2 other people posting for now, which are Dieter, aka “The Dieter”, the boss man, president and creative head of K&K, and Christy who is in charge of customer tech service and artist relations as well as roams the net and forums to see if she can help out with questions about our products.

So, they will write about interesting product developments, enlightening you about new uses of K&K stuff, and everything K&K, amplification of acoustic instruments that I personally don’t know as much about as they do.

What I am supposed to write about are the “soft” issues.

I will introduce our employees so you’ll know who you’re dealing with on the phones, as well who has had his/her hands on the products you might have or intend to acquire.

Maybe a little walk down memory lane sometimes.

Or presenting one of the office cats.

Right now, everybody is very excited about the upcoming bonus payment. Our business year ends on 8/31, and by the end of July, I normally decide with the help of our CPA, how high the employee bonus will be. Our system is very fair and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the reasons people stay and stay and stay with K&K. It is calculated using the hours EVER worked for the company, so the longer you work here, the higher the bonus will be. Some get several thousand $$. And it’s a good thing. As far as I can remember, the IRS has yet to send me Thank-you notes. Our employees are loyal and contribute immensely to the success of the company, so it makes much more sense to share the profit with them, and not Uncle Sam. And happy employees make great products.