4000 1-Key Grand Piano and Harp Planar Wave System

I was having a lot of trouble picking up the piano in the worship center at our Church, because the piano is a few feet away from one of the main house speakers. High quality cardioid mics would pick up the speaker as well and would start to go into feed back even at relatively low volumes, no matter how carefully they were placed, and the congregation was drowning out the piano.I tried a cheaper pizeo pickup with a pizeo to line converter by Pyle (used for record players to connect to a stereo). I had a lot of hum and general low quality audio.I purchased the Barcus Berry 4000 and out of the box ! was immeadiatly impressed with its quality of construction, I am an Electrical Eng, as well as a volunteer audio eng for my Church. The unit worked perfectly, no hum of any kind, even at max volume on the sound board.Attaching the pick up was very straight forward with the stick on strips they give you. They also supplied a bunch of additional stick ons. So if you need to re position or move to another instrument you have extra.The feedback problem was solved. The sound quality is very good and I can now bring up the volume on the piano way up with minimal concern. In fact I have I can now overpower the congregation with the piano, and have very good control over the volume of the piano. Its also very good at canceling out room noise, (obviously its connected to a soundboard that is designed to transmit sound so you will pick up some ambient room sound, but it is very muted, and easily controlled. Only very loud sound gets through to the pick up.) Note; the pickup is very dependent on where you place it on the sound board (as expected), they give some general guidelines in the supplied instructions, but you will need to fine tune the placement.

This is my first review of a product as i have never felt like i could add anything more to what other people say in their reviews.However, I feel I must in this case.I have just received two Barcus Berry 4000 Systems that I purchased from amazon.Out of the box the quality of the construction seems very good, Nice solid preamp boxesand the contact microphones are made of solid brass and plastic.The instructions are limited but the units aren't hard to figure out.I do have some issues with the quality however because it has to do with the basic requirementsfor any microphone (when purchased new out of the box).Both of the Contact Microphones suffer from clicks and pops which i have narrowed down to the cable and connector that leads from the piezo pickup to the 1/4" jack input. This becomes better or worse when you jiggle the cable.When inspecting the soldering at the connector end i can see that the wires were not 'tinned' before they were soldered onto the terminals (I suspect this is the issue, a dry joint or whatever)In my opinion this is such a basic requirement for any 'Professional' manufacture of audio equipment (To have a clean, uniform sound free form these types of avoidable issues) and thus is completely unacceptable. Having this issue present in one microphone would be concerning enough, but to have the identical problem in both is very poor indeed.The major issue i have with these systems is that there is a stark difference in the frequency response between the two capsulesI can not be sure if this is the nature of this brand (no consistency of the sound when they make these capsules) or the result of damage or a fault in one of the capsules.When purchasing other brand microphones in pairs you can be generally sure that they will all sound fairly close (without purchasing matched pairs) to one another.The difference between these is a concern. One has a considerable unnatural amount of mid to high frequencies (and has a higher output level) and the other seems fairly flat and neutral. (i've compared both capsules on the same position on the same source in the same BB 4000 unit and then into the same Preamp).Both Buffer units appear to be the same and have no discernible issues.I have emailed the manufacture to ask for advise (using the supplied email address on their website) but i have had no response apart from gmail telling me that the mailbox at their end is full.The trick will be in figuring out which unit to return to Amazon as i can't be sure which has the real issue.If anyone else has experience with this brand and/or these units i'd be very glad for any advise or input.Thank you.====UPDATE====With the purchase of a 3rd 4000 system i have been able to confirm that there is indeed a fault with one of the original pairs.I now have a reasonable sounding (as far as matching microphone sonic qualities) pair of these 4000 systems by Barcus-Berry.I must say that i'm disappointed in the manufacturing company as they never replied to my various emails asking for help.I must also mention that the issues with the quality of the build for the contact pickups are present in this latest one to turn up.All three contain crackle and popping noises seemingly to do with the shoddy soldering at the connector end.I have reduce the star rating from 3 stars to 2 stars mainly because of the blurb on the information sheet you find in the box which states:"This Barcus-Berry product is designed to satisfy the most rigorous demands of the professional musician and the precision manufacturingtechniques employed provide assurance of long continued, trouble-free service. For outstanding performance and dependability,you can always rely upon BARCUS-BERRY - the world's leading name in musical instrument transducers, pickups and microphones."Well.... no... no you can't.I urge caution on anyone purchasing a unit by itself, I mean i was only aware of something not being right because i had another version of themicrophone to compare against. If i didn't i would have just thought that these Mics need a lot of gain and are hissy as hell.. and sound like crap.Having said all this i'm going to try and work with these microphone into the futureI believe i can fix a few of these issues myself as i have some experience with electronics and building contact microphones.i hope my review will be help to anyone considering purchasing this product.Thank you.

I had it professionally installed by a piano tech. The issue I am having is that there are times when the pickup buzzes with the frequency of the G above middle C. I have had to find a way to bring out the black piece of plastic that is buzzing on the side. If the KMC music would like to contact me, we could discuss the issue.

Very happy with my purchase. I use it on my clavichord, which is an exceptionally difficult instrument to mic successfully, and I'm delighted with the results. Also, the product arrived well within the expected time allowance and everything was exactly as described. Thanks!

Very good

Replaced a wireless handheld mic we used for our baby grand, the Barcus Berry works great for our application.

I bought two of these for use at a contemporary music facility, where they received fairly light use. They weren't permanently installed but were occasionally moved from instrument to instrument. At a recent concert, both of them died. One of them had the pickup element fail, the other had the electronics fail. We were able to put the two working halves together and have at least one working pickup, but I am really not happy with the build quality, especially considering the high price.

This is perfect for augmenting the piano into personal monitors across a wide stage without sound bleed or feedback problems. With my PreSonus, I can EQ the feed adequately to satisfy all be the most picky musician.