Just to clarify, the circuit I recommended was actually designed for Inductive pickups and you have a magnetic but I couldn't find a circuit for a magnetic pickup and the inductive circuit is the closet thing to it and would work.
To answer your question, if you tried to "skip steps" or "take shortcuts" you will have an interface that is not as reliable and harder to program. At the very least you should have an op amp amplifier and a comparator instead of the 555 but the circuit recommended is the best signal conditioner I could find. I wouldn't recommend using the part you suggested because it will just make everything else more difficult and unreliable.