Shadow SH 927 NMG-4 Nanomag Bluegrass

On guitar and mandolin I prefer magnetic pickups to any of the very many stick-on and undersaddle piezos I've tried. So, I had high hopes for the Nanomag.

The design is, in theory, quite neat and sensible. In practice it's not quite so neat.

Pros:

* Good sound. Fairly acoustic-ish in tone - more so than many piezos
* The pickup element is position-adjustable by a kind of sliding arrangement
* The pickup preamp allows balancing of the output of the separate string courses - a VERY useful feature!
* On-board volume, treble and bass controls

Cons:

* Fairly flimsy build. The cable to the jack is soldered to the preamp PCB with no strain relief and the pickup element is not very robustly mounted
* The scratchplate feels and looks a little cheap
* Preamp battery cover fits poorly
The scratchplate is too clunky to fit as easily as it should and needs a bit of filing to fit and to allow better access to the screw that secures it to the neck
* The pickup does not sit firmly in place and can flap slightly up and down if the height-adjustable foot isn't stuck to the mandolin top with a small piece of double-sided tape or similar
* The thread on the pickup foot screw is too long and, as other reviewers have said, needs to be snipped to make it shorter
* The jack requires drilling the side of the mandolin. An endpin jack would have been SO much better.

On balance, I do like the Nanomag pickup: I just wish it was better made and implemented. The sound is very good and I'm actually using this for gigs now instead of my Baggs Radius. However, I have left the Baggs pickup on the mandolin too, as a backup, because I'm not 100% confident that the slightly flimsy build of the Shadow won't let me down at some point.

I'm glad I bought it. If it broke I MIGHT buy again, but I'd hesitate. If Shadow improved the implementation and build quality I would immediately buy the improved version!