These days, Lloyd Baggs (LR Baggs) is synonymous with great acoustic guitar pickup systems. But it hasn't been easy. This self-taught tinkerer - who started building one-of-a-kind acoustic guitars for legendary musicians in the '70s and early '80s - only turned to sound amplification after an eye-opening experience with Ry Cooder. "[After that] I spent so much time thinking about pickups," he remembers, "I stopped building guitars."