I'm not generally a fan of piezo pickups either, but was immediately struck by the absolutely natural sound of the K&K pickups when I heard Chris Newman playing at the Hawth in Crawley. I asked him what was in the guitar and heard about the K&K for the first time.

Basically, three oval discs - a bit like Honesty leaves - each of which is glued to the inside of the face, under the bridge, so as to pick up the sound of two strings. All connected by thin cables and joining into one master cable which runs to the jack socket. No volume or tone controls in the basic model - they have to be controlled by an acoustic amp like a Roland. As I said earlier, a good natural sound but loud. For putting through PA systems, there's also a K&K pre-amp which clips to the belt.

I was so impressed, I had one fitted to my mandolin and another to my tenor guitar.