Primarily acoustic guitarist looking for guidance....

OP, see what a pain in the ass this all is? We're a sick breed. :D

Thanks for the help guys, I'll try some things out and hopefully remember to report.
 
Has anyone tried a K&K pure mini w/ the AxeFX? That's what I have in my Froggy Bottom and I'm just curious to see if anyone has good success with it. It's passive, 3 transducers mounted to the bridge plate directly under the saddle. K&K recommends this be plugged into an input impedance of 500k to 1meg ohm.

Also, has anyone run into phasing issues and would the AxeFX have a way of easily flipping phase?
 
Ahess86 said:
Has anyone tried a K&K pure mini w/ the AxeFX? That's what I have in my Froggy Bottom and I'm just curious to see if anyone has good success with it. It's passive, 3 transducers mounted to the bridge plate directly under the saddle. K&K recommends this be plugged into an input impedance of 500k to 1meg ohm.

Also, has anyone run into phasing issues and would the AxeFX have a way of easily flipping phase?
Click to expand...

I tried my Taylor 614 with the ES system with the Ultra and it worked great. The ES system is multiple transducers mounted on the inside top and bridge.

- Richard
 
I'm using the passive LR Baggs M1 in one of my acoustic guitars. Actually a fine pickup.
No Tube Pre, I just use a NullFilter with high level first in chain to get the required signal level.
No Cab sim.

With the piezos in other guitars, I have a cab sim in a parallel row, adding a slight bit of cab resonance.
MamaBear 7.7 I think, but one of those Aurex IRs also works.
 
I downloaded the acoustic IR's but never got around to loading them into my Ultra.

Now Ultra-less waiting on the II.

I will post to the patches section when I get rolling with the II. I was starting to get a decent steel string guitar and a nylon string guitar set of patches together before I sold the Ultra.

- Richard
 
yek said:
I'm using the passive LR Baggs M1 in one of my acoustic guitars. Actually a fine pickup.
No Tube Pre, I just use a NullFilter with high level first in chain to get the required signal level.
No Cab sim.
Click to expand...

Thanks Yek!

I have to admit, one weird thing about the active version is that it seems very quiet. I have to almost max out any mixing board I plug it into in order to get an appreciable signal.

What is this NullFilter of which you speak? I used a PEQ block with no EQ shaping but added like 10 dB of gain with it.
 
Ahess86 said:
Has anyone tried a K&K pure mini w/ the AxeFX? That's what I have in my Froggy Bottom and I'm just curious to see if anyone has good success with it. It's passive, 3 transducers mounted to the bridge plate directly under the saddle. K&K recommends this be plugged into an input impedance of 500k to 1meg ohm.

Also, has anyone run into phasing issues and would the AxeFX have a way of easily flipping phase?
Click to expand...

I have two Martins w/ K&K (mini & standard). They work beautifully with the Ultra. No phasing issues. I use the Tube Amp Sim w/ a Para EQ - No Cab :)
 
Soopahmahn said:
What is this NullFilter of which you speak? I used a PEQ block with no EQ shaping but added like 10 dB of gain with it.
Click to expand...

It's a Filter block with defauklts, set to Null, with increased Level. It justs boosts the signal level, nothing else.
 
Nice guys!!! Great thread!!! I've really been thinking about this for some time now. The discussion on pickups seems to be the next hurdle. The M1 sounds great. I was thinking of getting an Ibeam but now I'm not exactly sure.

Thanks for the info from a forum lurker!!!
 
Does anyone have any tips for setting the EQ when playing an acoustic guitar? How can we minimize the "piezo sound"?
 
Rex said:
What do you like for pickups on a classical?
Click to expand...

I have an Epiphone Chet Atkins SST classical solid body. It has the stock UST piezo and a builtin 9 volt preamp.

The pickup is not very good. It has string balance problems and lots of quack. But I've learned to dial it in well with EQ and judicious use of reverb.

- Richard
 
Arjan said:
Does anyone have any tips for setting the EQ when playing an acoustic guitar? How can we minimize the "piezo sound"?
Click to expand...

For guitars with an onboard active EQ:

1. Cut the treble until it just starts to sound too dull then bump it back up a hair.
2. Setup a PEQ with a 10db boost and narrow Q. Sweep the frequency from 4K up, slowly, until you find the quack exaggerated. Once the quack center frequency is found, broaden the Q a hair and change the boost to a cut to cut the quack to taste.
3. I finish up with another PEQ to cut the boxiness, start around 400hz, then I boost by 1-2db in the warmth/body range, 120hz or so and add back in some shimmer but be careful to avoid the quack frequency.

All the frequencies above really depend on the instrument and pickup(s) but the technique can be applied either way.

- Richard
 
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i'll say it till im blue in the face- acoustic tone is tremendously influenced by EQ. I'm not knocking the appropriate pickup for the guitar- but even the best acoustic pickups need EQ to eliminate the variables they inherently add.
The most productive thing I have ever done with my acoustic tone is to spend allot of time with the parametric' s. they offer very precise tone shaping.
 
Mike Snider said:
i'll say it till im blue in the face- acoustic tone is tremendously influenced by EQ. I'm not knocking the appropriate pickup for the guitar- but even the best acoustic pickups need EQ to eliminate the variables they inherently add.
The most productive thing I have ever done with my acoustic tone is to spend allot of time with the parametric' s. they offer very precise tone shaping.
Click to expand...

Hey Mike,

No need to go blue in the face. I could tell how strong you felt about EQ back on page 1! I'm very interested in the EQ solution - I've been spending way too much time fiddling with combining IRs.

Using EQ as opposed to IRs is attractive to me, because (if I understand correctly) a sweet acoustic tone can be achieved by forcing the piezo signal to fit a particular frequency curve - I have an LP studio fitted with a powerbridge, a JPX6 with piezo and a Maton with piezo. I have not yet found an IR that will work equally well on all these.

Have you ever produced a frequency curve of your tone or, are you aware of a particular frequency curve profile to shoot for? Richard provided some tips above (I just read them. I'm at work now and will try these tonight) - do you use the same method?
 
If you have a DAW, then I would recommend Blue Cat Audio's FreqAnalyst Multi plug.

You can load a reference track into your DAW. Then play your own track and it will show you the EQ difference.

I use it ProTools LE and it's pretty cool for visualizing what is going on and learning where the differenct frequency bands that affect the tone are for your guitar and pickup combination.

- Richard
 
barhrecords said:
If you have a DAW, then I would recommend Blue Cat Audio's FreqAnalyst Multi plug.

You can load a reference track into your DAW. Then play your own track and it will show you the EQ difference.

I use it ProTools LE and it's pretty cool for visualizing what is going on and learning where the differenct frequency bands that affect the tone are for your guitar and pickup combination.

- Richard
Click to expand...

Interesting! I'll check out that plugin. Thanks!
 
I plugged in my new Martin (w/fishman electronics) into my Ultra>powered Atomics FR/FR yesterday and had a blast!
I messed around with presets and found just lowering gain turned most into a warm-slightly driven tone.The effects sound great and make me want to play acoustic more.The Tampura/Sitar patch was really cool too.

Good Luck!
 
JJunkie said:
Hey Mike,

No need to go blue in the face. I could tell how strong you felt about EQ back on page 1! I'm very interested in the EQ solution - I've been spending way too much time fiddling with combining IRs.

Using EQ as opposed to IRs is attractive to me, because (if I understand correctly) a sweet acoustic tone can be achieved by forcing the piezo signal to fit a particular frequency curve - I have an LP studio fitted with a powerbridge, a JPX6 with piezo and a Maton with piezo. I have not yet found an IR that will work equally well on all these.


Have you ever produced a frequency curve of your tone or, are you aware of a particular frequency curve profile to shoot for? Richard provided some tips above (I just read them. I'm at work now and will try these tonight) - do you use the same method?
Click to expand...
I've not produced curves.
My approach was to mimic the tone of my acoustic at greater volumes- as I really like the natural tone of my acoustic. I see you are working with a solid body and peizo- I've not worked with that kind of setup.
However, the main thing I did with the parametric was to cut the frequencies I was not hearing when playing my acoustic...acoustically. Rarely do I find myself boosting with eq- it's almost always a cut. The more proficient I became with the parametric, I found the cuts I was making were narrow in spectrum (less is more), the narrow cuts uncovered what was there naturally.
The presets I use for my acoustics are dialed in for each specifically (I have 2), as each guitar and p/u have there own set of variables.
The result is articulate, broad, warm.
 
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