Mics are nice, but in the real world, pickups have to do.
I love playing with a mic in a listening room, but in a noisy place, almost anything works better than a mic.
My SCGCs have passive SBT pickups, and that and a good preamp – in this case, a Rane AP13 – sound great if there’s time to dial things in. If the playing situation doesn’t present the opportunity to plug in the preamp and fiddle with it for a few minutes before getting started, then it’s time to default to the instruments with barn-door pickup systems that are essentially plug and play.
