Shadow Electronics, known for its Shadow pickups, was founded in Germany in 1971. The founder, Joe Malinik, was a well-known guitarist in his home country, leading blues and jazz bands and appearing regularly on many television and radio shows. In addition to being a renowned professional guitarist, he also had a deep interest in and knowledge of electronics, having built a guitar amplifier as a teenager. Thus, Shadow pickups were developed from his perspective as a guitar player and the engineering that shaped it.
In the early 70's, Shadow introduced the "Doubleplay," a blend of an in-bridge piezo and a magnetic pickup. By utilizing the advantages of both piezo and magnetic pickups and covering the areas that could not be picked up by the other, Shadow was able to reproduce tones that could not be reproduced by a single pickup alone. This "Doubleplay" system is still in use today, and is being produced in a more advanced form.
With the addition of microphones and blending systems, the company has succeeded in reproducing the tones of a wide range of instruments, from guitars to violins, mandolins, wood basses, and ethnic instruments, and has become a big brand, manufacturing more than one million pickups a year.
NanoMAG
The NanoMAG is a magnetic pickup with an active circuit sealed in a compact size of 6mm thick and 5mm wide. Mounted at the end of the fingerboard, it produces a sound with low noise and strong feedback.
Reference list price: 25,200 yen
Nanoflex
In-bridge type pickup. Normally, a piezo placed under the bridge picks up the string vibration from above, but this Nanoflex has sensitivity not only above but also below the bridge due to the combination of multiple piezoelectric materials. This allows the sound to include not only the vibration of the strings on the bridge, but also the tone of the topboard and bracing.
Reference list price: 22,050 yen
Sonic Doubleplay preamp system that allows mixing the tones of Nanomag and Nanoflex.
Reference list price: 47,250 yen