LR Baggs M80 Active Acoustic Guitar Soundhole Humbucker Pickup Certified Open Box

Name: LR Baggs M80 Active Acoustic Guitar Soundhole Humbucker Pickup
Brand: LR Baggs
Rating: 4.5 (40 reviews)

Active Acoustic Guitar Soundhole Pickup with Prewired Strapjack Harness, 1,000+ Hours Battery Life

Write your review

Item ID: M80Pickupd1

LR Baggs M80 Active Acoustic Guitar Soundhole Humbucker Pickup

Certified Open Box Savings!

Save $27.90 What is Certified Open Box?

The price below reflects your savings.

Savings:

.90

New for $279.00

Condition Notes:

This item is in like-new condition and perfect working order. Product includes all original accessories. This item ships in its original factory packaging.

This item was thoroughly inspected by our factory-authorized service team and is backed by Sweetwater's exclusive 2-year warranty. The images shown do not necessarily represent the condition of this particular item.

! 1 person has this Certified Open Box item in their cart. Order now before it's gone!

Add to Cart

Ask An Expert

Our expertly trained Sales Engineers are ready to help!

(800) 222-4700

What is a Sales Engineer?

LR Baggs M80 Active Acoustic Guitar Soundhole Humbucker Pickup

Only 1 Left!

Add to Cart

Add to list

Most Popular Accessories & Related Items

Back to navigation

This article was Written By

Our Product Research Team

Get to know them!

Get Natural Acoustic Guitar Sound Onstage

Looking for the perfect blend of string and body in a soundhole pickup? The LR Baggs M80 acoustic guitar pickup does just what you want your acoustic guitar's pickup to do - it brings the natural voice of your guitar to life onstage. Your strings will sound sweet but not too twangy and bright, which is a problem with many acoustic pickups. The M80 not only picks up your string sound, but also the vibrations of your guitar giving a complete sonic image of your instrument. And you'll have full control of your detailed, full sound thanks to the LR Baggs M80's built-in volume control. You'll be glad to know that there's a pre-wired strapjack harness, so installation should be a snap. Best of all, you can feel free to plug in and play all you want.

Related Videos: M80 Active Acoustic Guitar Soundhole Humbucker Pickup

LR Baggs M80 Active Acoustic Guitar Pickup at a Glance:

Natural-sounding acoustic pickup
Choose active or passive modes
Captures the true sound of your guitar's body

Natural-sounding acoustic pickup

Building upon LR Baggs successful M1 Active pickup, the M80 takes a floating second coil and turns it into a reactive body sensor. You get more of the motion and movement of the guitar translated into sound than ever before. This 3D body sensor is tuned to pick up the entire frequency range of the guitar adding richness and detail to the sound. The string signal and body sensor signal are then added together to give the LR Baggs M80 acoustic pickup a natural and lifelike sound.

Ready for the stage

Designed for use onstage and in the studio, the LR Baggs M80 acoustic pickup has many gig-worthy features. An easy to reach volume control lets you turn your guitar sound up or down on the fly without hassle. A convenient check battery light lets you know when your battery is getting low. If your battery dies at the gig, you can keep the show going by switching the pickup over to passive mode. Active mode adds a slight contour to your guitar's EQ that is perfect for any style of playing. The LR Baggs M80 is also designed to be used at high volumes without feedback issues.

Captures the true sound of your guitar's body

The 3D body sensor captures the sound of your guitar like never before. You'll notice that when you tap or slap your guitar percussively, the LR Baggs M80 picks up that sound just like a microphone would. The idea behind the M80 is that the entire guitar is important to the sound, not just your strings. Most soundhole pickups only worry about the strings, and piezo pickups aren't able to get the full sound of the guitar. LR Baggs designed the M80 to grab every detail on the instrument for the best sound reproduction possible.

LR Baggs M80 Active Acoustic Guitar Pickup Features:

Acoustic guitar pickup that captures the sound of the guitar's body
Active and passive pickup modes
Reproduces the richness and complexity of your guitars sound
Great for strumming and fingerpicking

Capture the true sound of your guitar with the LR Baggs M80 active acoustic guitar pickup!

What is Certified Open Box Gear?

At Sweetwater, we're so picky that what we call "Certified Open Box" is actually better than what most music retailers sell as "new" gear! Our gear hasn't endured hundreds of people a week plunking away at all the keyboards, fumbling through Stairway to Heaven on every guitar or playing with every fader and knob on a mixer or control surface.

Certified Open Box (also known as a demo) means we’ve had it out of the box for our YouTube channel, displayed at events, tested in our studio, or maybe it was in a customer’s hands for a few days and isn’t ‘factory fresh’ as a result. Every Certified Open Box item we sell has Sweetwater’s 2-year Total Confidence Coverage™ warranty and has been tested and verified up to ‘new’ specs by our factory-authorized technicians to make sure it’s in perfect working order before we ship it to you.

When you buy a Certified Open Box item at Sweetwater, you get:

2-year Total Confidence Coverage Warranty™!
Products inspected and tested by our factory-authorized techs, guaranteed to function like new (or better)!
FREE shipping on most items
Equipment that will MEET or EXCEED your expectations!

Click HERE to browse our current inventory of Certified Open Box equipment. Purchasing Certified Open Box gear from Sweetwater is a smart and safe way to save!

Resources

From the Manufacturer

M80 Acoustic Soundhole Pickup User Manual

Coil Splitting and Coil Tapping: Is There a Difference?

Feb 5, 2021

Warranty Info

Sweetwater's FREE 2-Year Total Confidence Coverage Warranty

Extra peace of mind at no extra cost.

Save money with FREE parts and labor
Get back to making music with the industry's fastest turnaround time
Fix it the first time with our award-winning, factory-certified Service Department

Learn More about Total Confidence Coverage

Back to navigation

Tech Specs

Instrument: Acoustic Guitar
Type: Humbucker
Position: Soundhole
Active/Passive: Active, Switchable to Passive
Built-in Preamp: Yes
Controls: Volume, Active/Passive switch, battery check
Features: Feedback Resistant
Power Source: 1 x CR2032 (300 hours)
Manufacturer Part Number: M80

What Makes Our Sales Engineers Great?

Sweetwater Sales Engineers are a world-class team of experts dedicated to you. Hand selected from across the globe, each brings a wealth of experience and expertise in the world of music gear to provide you with unparalleled service completely free of charge. Friendly relationships, real trust, and the right gear are only a call or a click away!

(800) 222-4700

Contact Your Sales Engineer

Back to navigation

So far I've only used the pickup in passive mode. I'm using LR Baggs Venue DI as my preamp. I like having control of the EQ. I'm still experimenting with the settings. I'm trying not to let my fingernails hit the pick guard when strumming. It will definitely pick that noise up. But I've made the adjustments in my strumming technique. Overall I like it. It sounds a little different than the Anthem and the VTC pickups in my Breedloves. I think that's a good thing.

One thing I REALLY LIKE, is the ability to plug in to a DAW and adjust the signal strength on each string by using the Allen wrench provided. This is a huge advantage! I get a really balanced tone on this guitar. It tickles my ears.

Shout out to Sweetwater and Nate Burkhardt for the excellent customer service.

Absolutely the best, most natural sounding acoustic guitar pickup I've ever heard! I have two; one on my Martin Custom Shop MC-28 and the other is on my Martin D12-28. Much more realistic acoustic sound than any piezo pickup. Would recommend this pickup without any hesitation!

I just can't say enough about this pickup. It has the mojo that I have been looking for. I use to mic my guitar… this is sooooo much better! Richer and fuller sound. My amp sounds better too! Playing through an older Peavy Ecoustic 110. Makes me sound like a better player that I am. Very impressed

I did quite a bit of research on this product, compared it to various competitors, and watched probably too many videos of players using the M-80. I could have gone cheap and for some guitars that might be the solution, but not for my Martin D-35. First, this M-80 performs exactly as advertised. The sound is simply incredible and it retains the D-35s warmth and tone. This may not apply for all guitars, but the D-35's end pin hole needed to be enlarged to 1/2". To do it right, I bought a reamer for $94 - yeah, I know, but I was not going to screw up my $... guitar by using a cheap tool. BTW, it worked perfectly, took 3 minutes (that's almost $33/min, but see above).

In the D-35, the M-80 jack went in without a problem. I recommend using your D string to hook a loop through the jack hole on the side, then pulling it to the end pin hole. One thing to remember is to fit it until the entire smaller threaded part sticks out. I found out the hard way that if you leave it just a bit short then screw on the strap pin, the guitar cable will not insert all the way until it clicks, resulting in no connection. The pickup went in the sound hole without issue. For you lefties, all you have to do is reverse the last two poles into the empty holes. The last open hole isn't actually empty - it has a smaller pole that must be removed and put in the other end. Another important point - The pickup fit great for the D-35, but I had planned on getting another M-80 for my Martin 000 28 and found out that the M-80 just barely does NOT fit because the sound hole is smaller than the D-35. That means guitar damage if you try to force it - I did not which = no damage!

Fantastic product and I highly recommend it. Just make sure you check the end pin hole and the size of the sound hole first. I contacted LR Baggs and they are very helpful and friendly. But no one compares to Anthony Giraldi from Sweetwater. He is simply the best - experienced, knowledgeable, professional, responsive, and friendly. Lots of adjectives, but they all apply to Anthony.

So, first I have to confess to a bias - I have LR Baggs p/ups in several guitars (Anthem, HiFi, Element), and have always been happy with their products. I wanted to try a soundhole p/up to get a different sound, but have been disappointed by other models (Dimarzio Black Angel, Fishman Rare Earth, Seymour Duncan).

I'm happy to say that the M80 overcame my reservations in a big way! The 2nd floating coil picks up body resonance in such a way that the string sound picked up by the top coil's magnetic poles isn't dominant. The result is a rich and very acoustic-like sound. On my preamp, I backed the mids down a bit, but otherwise didn't have to do much to get a nice even response across all six strings without the faux-electric guitar sound that is typical from other soundhole p/ups. I liked it so much that I decided to mount it permanently into the guitar.

Bottom line, I highly recommend this pickup - it's worth every penny!