Tag Archives: Schatten pickups

World Piano Day

March 29, 2019Latest NewsPiano Day, Schatten Design, Schatten pickups, World Piano DayBlogAdmin

Today is Piano Day – a day when we celebrate one of the few ‘normal’ stringed instruments we don’t sell (although it’ll come as no surprise to anyone who knows us that we have a Schatten Design pickup for it).

#DidYouKnow that it is celebrated on the 29th of March because this is the 88th day of the year? if we applied that to other stringed instruments the 4th and 6th of January would be very busy days – lol

The piano isn’t quite as old as many of the other stringed instruments with which we are so familiar. It began life, mainly through medieval times, as a dulcimer (for which we also do pickups); a fretted string instrument with three or four strings attached. From there it developed into the clavichord, the spinet, virginal, clavecin, gravicembalo, and finally, the harpsichord in the 15th century.

The harpsichord is considered to be to the closest predecessor to the modern day piano because the keyboard that activated the strings. However, it took a further 300 years of development for the harpsichord to become the modern piano.

So why not celebrate by rolling up your sleeves and giving the ivories a tinkle or, failing that, put your favourite piano sonata on and enjoy someone else’s playing.

Banjo Pickups

August 20, 2018Latest Newsbanjo, banjo pickups, BJ-02, Schatten Design, Schatten Design Acoustic Pickups, Schatten pickups, temporarily out of stockBlogAdmin

We don’t know what’s going on with all you lovely banjo players at the moment but you’ve stripped us of all bar the BJ-02 Pro pickups.

Never fear as we’ll have more in before too long. Just keep an eye on our posts and we’ll let you know when they’re back in. If, however, you are in urgent need of one give us a call and we can get one expedited ahead of our main order for you.

Cheaper on the net?

March 15, 2018Latest Newscheap pickups, cheaper on the net, cheapest pickups, pickups, Schatten Design, Schatten pickups, webshopBlogAdmin

We know we’ve said this before but, given a recent conversation, we thought it was worthwhile repeating…

Taking into account forex, and not forgetting your bank will charge you for currency exchange, together with postage costs we are the same price or lower than certain well-known internet giants when it comes to our pickups.

Add to that the fact that we provide free advice, can arrange for one-off special requests, and even get it fitted for you if you are local to us and you can understand why we get a little annoyed when we’re told (after spending a half hour discussing the technical ins and outs of a particular pick up) “thanks but I can get it cheaper on the net.”

If that isn’t enough to convince you to shop small bear in mind that when you buy from us you are supporting a small, independent, British company who puts money into the local community; we buy our lunches at the local shop, use the local post office, fill up at the local garage, etc. You get the point. We are not a faceless European-based internet giant.

And, even though we are a genuine bricks and mortar company we do have a webshop so you don’t have to phone or e-mail us – unless you want to; in which case we are happy to help you in person.

Finally, a caveat emptor. Late last year we had someone wanting to return a faulty pickup. This was surprising as a) there’s rarely a problem with them and b) he wasn’t a customer of ours. On discussion it turned out he’d bought it cheap from Ebay and the Ebay seller wouldn’t honour the guarantee. The bad news for the purchaser was that we will only honour the guarantee on pickups sold by us or by a luthier to whom we’ve sold the pickup as, otherwise, we have no idea whether it’s new, second or third-hand, or a copy.