I installed a McIntyre feather underneath the top , behind the bridge, on my Ratliff RA5, and drilled for the end pin jack. ( Use an omni-bit for drilling the hole and you'll thank yourself and me) Since I now play in a band ( Two Foot Level ) with drums, and I also play an electric mandolin, I needed to devise a way to amplify both instruments without having to just go direct with my acoustic.
   So I built an acoustic style amp and run my acoustic through a BBE Acoustimax pre-amp pedal, to an A/B splitter and to my amp. The A/B splitter is to send one signal to two channels, I set the channel 3 on my amp hotter than 2 so I can have a boost for leads. Since you can't back off a mic for rhythm and step in for lead it's great to have two volumes to work with. You can also use a volume pedal or clean boost pedal to achieve this.
   With a good pickup such as the one I mentioned or one from Pickup the World, and a good pre-amp like the BBE Acoustimax, or Lr Baggs, and an amp designed for acoustic instruments ( tube amps color the signal to much for it to sound natural ) you can dial in a sound that is at least close to how you mandolin sounds. It will almost always sound better through a mic, but if you need to play over drums then you gotta amplify, and try to amplify it right.                Peace jmandomac