These days, Lloyd Baggs (LR Baggs) is synonymous with great acoustic guitar pickup systems. But it hasn’t been easy. This self-taught tinkerer – who started building one-of-a-kind acoustic guitars for legendary musicians in the ’70s and early ’80s – only turned to sound amplification after an eye-opening experience with Ry Cooder. “[After that] I spent so much time thinking about pickups,” he remembers, “I stopped building guitars.
During our chat, Baggs recounts the ups-and-downs of perfecting pickups (in the middle of his research he had to take a job selling cars), the importance of a pre-amp for gigging musicians, his custom work for various brands (including Breedlove) and describes how he’s recently returned to his first love… building acoustics.
It’s a fascinating conversation with one of the music industry’s true pioneers.
Acoustic Voices: A Guitar Podcast is an all-new collaboration between Breedlove Guitars and the Fretboard Journal magazine. We hope you enjoy it. Our music is by Luke Basile.
