Acoustic Guitar Tone Match - Source included

Narzugon

Narzugon

Power User
I've been following an earlier thread on an acoustic TM. I knew my buddy with this awesome acoustic would be game. So we took the opportunity to proceed with the first step just to see what we could do.

This was the first TM for both of us. We used a Gerald Sheppard acoustic (check out the luthier sometime - awesome instrument) loaded with a Sunrise pick up (think Michael Hedges) into a pre and into Pro Tools.

We are posting the source acoustic guitar file (48k wav), the match IR done with my strat and the sample audio files recorded with the strat using the TM. This was our first attempt and welcome suggestions or hair brained ideas. Hope you enjoy them. \m/

Source track of the acoustic is played starting with all 6 strings open, then barring all 6 as he goes up the neck. A spin off of Cliff's boogie. :) Play around with it.

Sheppard's Sunrise Source 48k wav

Sheppard's Sunrise IR

Sheppard's Sunrise Matched Audio Example 1 - Bridge Pickup

Sheppard's Sunrise Matched Audio Example 2 - Neck Pickup
 
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I added an audio clip of a match I did using the strat's neck pickup. If you guys prefer it I can post that IR as well. I like it better but there is something I like about the bridge pup as well. I'd like to hear some feed back from you guys. This is a really nice hand made acoustic with a really nice pickup. I'd really like to hear it with a piezo. :)

Clarification: I'd like to hear the result of someone using the source file to create thier own TM for thier piezo equipped guitar. I don't own one.
 
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Sounds really good! I've tried tone matching to an acoustic source before, but the results were less than satisfactory. It always came out sounding "phasey". These samples sound great! If they translate well live then I could see using it instead of my piezo equipped guitars.
 
Your tones sound nice. A couple of suggestions:

  • If at all possible, try to use a miked guitar as your source. Even the best pickups aren't as good as a pure acoustic sound.


  • When I'm trying to fudge an acoustic sound on magnetic pickups, I have the best luck with in-between settings. On Strat-style guitars, the neck/middle position works best to my ears.


  • Copying an acoustic tone with an electric guitar is a noble cause; sometimes you need that kind of tone, and an electric is all that's available. It can never be a perfect match, though. The difference between acoustic tone and electric tone goes beyond EQ, but tone-matching only addresses EQ.
 
Rex said:
Your tones sound nice. A couple of suggestions:
  • If at all possible, try to use a miked guitar as your source. Even the best pickups aren't as good as a pure acoustic sound.
Click to expand...

Agreed and that's on the list. Our initial attempt was with a mic but something went wrong and time ran out. So we went with the easy capture on the Sunrise pickup. I'm hoping to pull another friend in who has some nice mic's and give that a whirl.

Rex said:
  • When I'm trying to fudge an acoustic sound on magnetic pickups, I have the best luck with in-between settings. On Strat-style guitars, the neck/middle position works best to my ears.
Click to expand...

I'll give that a shot as well. I also have my only remaining strat wired for bridge and neck combo which may be nice.

Rex said:
  • Copying an acoustic tone with an electric guitar is a noble cause; sometimes you need that kind of tone, and an electric is all that's available. It can never be a perfect match, though. The difference between acoustic tone and electric tone goes beyond EQ, but tone-matching only addresses EQ.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I was inspired by an earlier thread on capturing an acoustic where it was suggested to post the source so people could use that to match with thier own guitars. So a bit of "let's see what we can do" and a bit of hoping it's good enough to use in certain situations.

I'd also like to hear what others can do with them as well.
 
Narzugon said:
I've been following an earlier thread on an acoustic TM. I knew my buddy with this awesome acoustic would be game. So we took the opportunity to proceed with the first step just to see what we could do.

This was the first TM for both of us. We used a Gerald Sheppard acoustic (check out the luthier sometime - awesome instrument) loaded with a Sunrise pick up (think Michael Hedges) into a pre and into Pro Tools.

We are posting the source acoustic guitar file (48k wav), the match IR done with my strat and the sample audio files recorded with the strat using the TM. This was our first attempt and welcome suggestions or hair brained ideas. Hope you enjoy them. \m/

Source track of the acoustic is played starting with all 6 strings open, then barring all 6 as he goes up the neck. A spin off of Cliff's boogie. :) Play around with it.

Sheppard's Sunrise Source 48k wav

Sheppard's Sunrise IR

Sheppard's Sunrise Matched Audio Example 1 - Bridge Pickup

Sheppard's Sunrise Matched Audio Example 2 - Neck Pickup
Click to expand...
To be perfectly honest with you, I think the tone matches don't even come close to an acoustic guitar sound. It's probably enough for an in-the-mix thing, but I consider tonematching an acoustic more like an effect instead of replicating an acoustic.
Piezos improve on that, of course, but even with a Piezo, it just doesn't feel right. Piezos still can not deliver that percussiveness of an acoustic guitar either, they just add those extra high frequencies. In the end, a 'naked' Piezo almost sounds like a tone matched neck pickup single coil. At least for me.
I've read the other thread and simply could not come close to the tone match example posted there. I'm a little bit envious, maybe it's because Parkers have active piezos and I got a passive one, but I simply could not replicate that sound even with a piezo equipped guitar.

I love piezos, but not really for replicating acoustic sounds, but more for the flexibility they grant. Most piezo equipped guitars have two seperate outputs. It's great if you can blend the sounds together or can add that clean clarity of the piezo over a distorted rhythm sound. If you add a multiband compressor to add a lot of sustain to the lower frequencies, you can even tone match your magnetic pickups to create a stereo-output guitar.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
To be perfectly honest with you, I think the tone matches don't even come close to an acoustic guitar sound. It's probably enough for an in-the-mix thing, but I consider tonematching an acoustic more like an effect instead of replicating an acoustic.
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I agree. I don't really care for acoustics w/pickups either - at least most of them. They don't sound acoustic then. For me it's experimental, educational and a cool effect.

Zwiebelchen said:
Piezos improve on that, of course, but even with a Piezo, it just doesn't feel right. Piezos still can not deliver that percussiveness of an acoustic guitar either, they just add those extra high frequencies. In the end, a 'naked' Piezo almost sounds like a tone matched neck pickup single coil. At least for me.
I've read the other thread and simply could not come close to the tone match example posted there. I'm a little bit envious, maybe it's because Parkers have active piezos and I got a passive one, but I simply could not replicate that sound even with a piezo equipped guitar.
Click to expand...

Have you tried this source audio yet? I'd like to hear your results.
 
zeibelchen, emulation has it's place, even if it doesn't entirely replicate a high quality acoustic. I bet that its most common use will be replacing strummed acoustic: eg George Michael's "Faith" and early Who song. The second will be when the first verse is on acoustic, and second on electric. There's also that hideous Santana moment, where he tries to play acoustic on a chest high stand.

Guys. i'm going to build a personal library of 5 or 6 IRs, which I'll try out at rehearsal. It might well be that something which sounds beautiful in recording doesn't work with a band mix. I would be grateful to anyone who can post high quality recordings of high quality guitars. In return, I will post my IRs (from a Parker piezo), and comments on how they work in a band setting. This won't happen immediately, because I was admitted to hospital at the weekend (no flowers please), but it will give me something to do whilst convalescing.
 
Seen Rush lately? Close your eyes and you would NEVER know that the "acoustic" was actually a piezos and an Axe-Fx.

Narzugon and others, keep it up... Artists always want more of this stuff and I am happy to point them to threads like this.
 
Roland said:
zeibelchen, emulation has it's place, even if it doesn't entirely replicate a high quality acoustic. I bet that its most common use will be replacing strummed acoustic: eg George Michael's "Faith" and early Who song. The second will be when the first verse is on acoustic, and second on electric. There's also that hideous Santana moment, where he tries to play acoustic on a chest high stand.

Guys. i'm going to build a personal library of 5 or 6 IRs, which I'll try out at rehearsal. It might well be that something which sounds beautiful in recording doesn't work with a band mix. I would be grateful to anyone who can post high quality recordings of high quality guitars. In return, I will post my IRs (from a Parker piezo), and comments on how they work in a band setting. This won't happen immediately, because I was admitted to hospital at the weekend (no flowers please), but it will give me something to do whilst convalescing.
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Looks like an interesting project! I'm definitely following this and will try some more attempts to create a convincing acoustic sound on my piezo. Right now, I couldn't even find a good source material to start with. I tried tonematching solo-act's soundcloud recording (which I felt sounded amazing!), but the results were mediocre at best. To be honest with you here, I think the wav file you posted doesn't even sound like an acoustic to me, even if it ACTUALLY IS an acoustic, lol.

We probably just need better source material!

I thought about browsing the Thomann webpage for sound clips of expensive acoustic guitars like a martin D-45, but I always feel they cut the bass way too much for that recordings.
 
Awesome Roland. Hope you have a speedy recovery! I'm hoping we can capture this acoustic with some nice mic's in the next few weeks as well. We'll post sources then.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
To be honest with you here, I think the wav file you posted doesn't even sound like an acoustic to me, even if it ACTUALLY IS an acoustic, lol.

We probably just need better source material!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say it doesn't sound like an acoustic. It sounds like an acoustic with a pickup. You do realize that the source file is there to "excite" every frequency possible (according to Cliff's vid)? So we weren't looking to play a master piece for the source file, we were just looking to have the widest spectrum possible. I'm assuming this yields better results than a "performance" clip.
 
solo-act said:
I did an acoustic tone match the other day with a friend. I need to trim down the source file and post it, but I'm thinking of tonematching this tone match clip just to see how it turns out.
Click to expand...


Huh? Is this a tone match or a recording? I'm not getting the "tonematching this tone match clip" comment.

Great tone by the way. :)
 
His sound cloud clip is the tone match played on his Parker which sounds great! His other comment was referring to giving my source file a try.
 
Narzugon said:
I wouldn't say it doesn't sound like an acoustic. It sounds like an acoustic with a pickup. You do realize that the source file is there to "excite" every frequency possible (according to Cliff's vid)? So we weren't looking to play a master piece for the source file, we were just looking to have the widest spectrum possible. I'm assuming this yields better results than a "performance" clip.
Click to expand...
I wasn't talking about the playing. I'm perfectly fine with just strumming "testing tones" for tonematching. That's not it. I just feel that the wav you posted misses mids and bass and the percussiveness of acoustic guitars.
 
Admin M@ said:
Seen Rush lately? Close your eyes and you would NEVER know that the "acoustic" was actually a piezos and an Axe-Fx.

Narzugon and others, keep it up... Artists always want more of this stuff and I am happy to point them to threads like this.
Click to expand...


Exactly.
 
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