advice on pickups

[washboardchris]

Anyone tried the Lace resonator pickup&how does it compare to the Dave King hum-bucker.(I know a mike sounds better but sometimes I find I need a pickup) Thanks Chris

[Michael Messer]

Hi Chris,

The Lace Sensor pickups are very good. They work well. Another good pickup that is well worth checking out, is the Flatbucker, made by Hermann Attenberger in Germany. (http://www.atte.de/)

Let me know how you get on

Shine On
Michael

[honeyboy]

When I was looking into the whole amplification/pickup issue, it would have been useful to have had some sample information - there have been a lot of words written on this subject, but it is difficult to hear what things might sound like.

I did a lot of experiments when i got my MM Blues to figure out the best way of recording it - (and that is not as simple a topic as you might imagine....)

I needed a pickup signal to feed into Ableton Live that was just sensing the strings - and (for a variety of reasons) a(nother) microphone would not do the job. I bought a Lace Acoustic Ultra Slim Humbucker, and embarked on a 'journey'

In the end, (to cut a long story short) I figured out that you need two microphones, one pointed about 6" from top of the fingerboard and another about 6-8" from the cone (just offset from the bridge). The Lace Acoustic Sensor pickup signal does need to go through a pre-amp and eq of some sort, since it is a quite low output signal. It also does not sound very 'acoustic' like a Sunrise or LR Baggs M1 active pickup does.

And don't even think of getting any 'resonator tone' from a magnetic pickup - it purely senses the strings. (When you crank it up a bit, into a decent amp,then you can get a nice 'Chris Whitley' type thing going, where the sound of the amplified strings gets picked up by the cone.. although it can be difficult to control)

I knocked this video up quickly from some old experiments I did - This is using Nickel Strings, (which I quickly discarded - they make a difficult recording task even harder). (The Lace Sensor sounds MUCH BETTER with phosphor bronze strings - you get higher output, better balance and a sweeter acoustic tone).

Unfortunately, I don't have any phosphor bronze, twin condenser + lace pickup recordings handy to show that exact setup.

However, here is nickel strings, one single condenser microphone recorded directly to disk, showing the basic sound, pickup + mic, pickup only and mic only - warts and all.

[washboardchris]

Hi,thanks for the help, my problem is that I have a Dave king pickup mounted to a guitar I have which I am pleased with tho its a bit bassy. I have been offered a lace pickup at a very good price & wondered if anyone had tried both and had any opinion. Thanks again for your help

[blueshome]

"I figured out that you need two microphones"

Why? Recording resos with a variety of mics from SM57 to U47 to R44 ribbons we've only ever needed one for mono, & I think MM only uses a single SM57 in the studio. Have had good results with 2 mics set up in M-S configuration for stereo though.

Given decent placement (determined by listening through headphones and moving the mic around to find the sweet spot for the room and particular instrument) we've always been able to capture the "live" sound pretty well.

BTW nearly always use 2 mics on a wooden acoustic guitar though.

[robn]

Oct 14, 2009 13:07:18 GMT washboardchris said:

Hi,thanks for the help, my problem is that I have a Dave king pickup mounted to a guitar I have which I am pleased with tho its a bit bassy. I have been offered a lace pickup at a very good price & wondered if anyone had tried both and had any opinion. Thanks again for your help

Both the Lace Dobro (single coil) and the Lace Ultraslim Acoustic Sensor (humbucker) are thicker than the Dave King. The Lace USA is better balanced than the Dave Kings that I have tried (in fact, it is the best PB string balanced p/u I have assessed and it is nice and clean through an acoustic amp) - but you would need to check that it will fit your guitar. The Lace Dobro Sensor single coil is OK and has that distinct single coil sound (and the noise issues that single coils suffer!). It is also the tallest of the bunch as it was designed to fit spiderbridge guitars which tend to have the fretboards set a little higher off the bodies.

The Flatbucker is very slim and powerfull - a great stage p/u if you want that "Chris Whitely" or "Gwyn Ashton" sound and are going through a guitar amp. It's nicely balanced with nickel strings and is OK with PBs if you mount it away from the strings (it is powerful enough to be backed off quite a good distance from the strings).

Robin

[bod]

Hey Robin - good to see you dug a way out through all those emails! ;D

(I can relate - just last week I had to sort my email on returning to work after several months out. When the inbox finally loaded there were 13, 517 emails, it took me several hours just to get rid of the obvious junk...)

Cheers

Dave

[Deleted]

I have the lacewing humbucker on my Busker deco with PhB strings and it is perfect to my ears and the audiences that have heard it.

I have the flatbucker onmy Delta with nickle strings and that suits ther guitar so well. I am taking said guitar to a gig in 5 minutes!