Interesting reading. Still got about half of the posts to catch up with, but I wanted to get some info Mike with the Norman guitar. I don't know where you are, but if you're anywhere in southern Ontario, you might want to be in touch with Ralph Pickersgill in Port Dover (1-519-583-3940). He does pretty fine unobtrusive work. He uses good quality piezo pickups & experiments with the individual guitar for best placement. The ONLY cutting he will do on a guitar is for an end-pin jack. No batteries to worry about either. A small outboard preamp can be used, but the system works pretty fine without it.

On the advice of a friend I got in touch with him and arranged to have him wire up my custom-built Glen Reid acoustic bass guitar (about which more later). I took it down to him, we chatted for a bit and he very politely suggested I piss of for a couple of hours while he did the work. Took it to a folk club (Caledonia) that evening and the sound was just wall-to-wall even at low volume levels. Simply outstanding. Cost me about $160 (apparently cost can vary with installation). I'm very happy with it, and recommend the man's work quite highly.

If you're nowhere near that area, a good quality piezo system should be possible, and is probably the easiest and quite possibly the best solution. It should in no way change the sound you have acoustically.