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Post by jackstrat on Mar 25, 2010 23:06:56 GMT
Hiya Gang,
I recently got a Fishman reso pickup fitted to my Regal RD40 coz I was having too much hassle with sound engineers/feedback and all that stuff when miking it. I just want a working guitar that I can plug and play without too much hassle.
Anyway, things were fine although I'd noticed that the sound of the guitar was a bit toppy/thin through a PA and a couple of trusted friends had mentioned similar. So, I sought some advice and in doing so was given a couple of small pre-amps to try out....and I was stunned by the difference these made...particularly the Fishman EQ PRO. Even with the sliders set completely flat, this unit immediately brought roundness and bottom-end to my amplified guitar sound while cutting out some of the nasty high-end sharpness that had previously been part of the problem. Wowee...!!
Anyone else any experience with pre-amps?
Niall
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2010 11:32:18 GMT
I hate working with these passive piezo type pickups (including the Fishman), and the only way to tame them is with a preamp and / or graphic eq. I often get this when people turn up at open mic. and proudly declare that their reso. is equipped with a pickup. To keep 'em happy I plug it in, tell them I'm putting an SM57 on it just to fill out the sound a bit, then pull the pickup channel down on the desk and use about 70% balance on the mic. The main trouble is that these days a lot of small-time sound men have forgotten how to mic an instruument, and sometimes don't even carry the right mic for the job...that's why I now have my own SM57, by far the best investment I've made of amplifying reso guitars.
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Post by Michael Messer on Mar 26, 2010 12:00:16 GMT
I think we should have a sponsorship deal with Shure!
The Fishman really does need a pre-amp and some graphic tweaking to get it sounding good. I would still use it in conjunction with a 57 to add to the tone. I would do the same as John has recommended - something like 30% pickup to 70% mic, or even 40/60.
Shine On Michael.
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Post by jackstrat on Mar 26, 2010 12:04:18 GMT
Hiya lads,
Thanks for the replies. Interestingly, the pickup is actually the active version...but regardless of this, I do agree that SM57 is really the way to go for sound (I also carry my own)...just that as I say, it seems that some engineers either don't want to or don't know how to deal with the miking situation successfully. I will however be trying the blended sound of both mic and pickup...gotta be done...
Niall
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Post by honeyboy on Mar 26, 2010 17:37:37 GMT
I completely agree that acoustic instrument pickups need a pre-amp to work to the best of their ability. However, there has been a huge leap forward in the past few years in pre-amps with 'microphone modelling' software. Essentially, this is a digital 'image map' of the 'acoustic resonance' of your guitar as picked up by a particular microphone. Preparing this is slightly tricky (you need the original guitar, a recording studio and the actual microphones you want to emulate). The pre-amp then uses the pickup signal as a 'trigger' to blend this map into the pickup signal, using some pretty 'hard sums' done in real time. The end result, to my ears, is something practically indistinguishable to a mic'ed guitar, but just louder. Admittedly, you can't move the instrument relative to the microphone, but before you dismiss the concept out of hand, take an open minded listen to the results. Jerry Douglas uses this type of modelling pre-amp all the time now, even for recording, it is that good. Problem is that the initial cost of these modelling pre-amps was prohibitive. But like all things, the power of the processors doing the 'hard sums' have doubled every 18 months, whilst their cost has halved. This has made the latest generation of these pre-amps affordable to the average semi pro musician. Latest generation state of the art pre-amp modelling come from Fishman - they have a world lead currently in this area. Look at the Aura Spectrum DI. It has 24 bit high quality DAC's and 32 bit internal processing. There are a large number of superbly created resonator instrument images (largely from Beard and NRP) downloadable from the Fishman website which all work well with a Busker or MM resonator equiped with any kind of string sensing or piezo type pickup. If your pockets aren't so deep, you can pick up a Yamaha AG Stomp (The very first acoustic modelling preamp) secondhand for a few pounds on ebay or the like (most people don't even know what they are). I recently bought one for £70 and it is superb. They originally sold for around £500 and their quality is excellent, with expensive high quality 20 bit DACs. They don't produce as authentic results with resonator instruments (since you can't vary the image maps - you are effectively stuck with the ones loaded in to the device when it was built) - but they produce great results with a weissenborn or any acoustic guitar. And they have a super high quality reverb (which is puzzlingly absent from the Fishman devices) It is the future, and if John Dopyera was here now, I'm sure he would be in the thick of this particular area of rapidly evolving research (providing he encountered it before he was 35). As my good friend Douglas Adams used to say 1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
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Post by Michael Messer on Mar 27, 2010 10:11:30 GMT
The Fishman Aura is obviously a very clever box of tricks and has become a successful product. I have heard a few of these type of boxes (not just the Fishman) being used by well known musicians and all I can say is that at this point in time they are not for me. Not that Fishman care if I like their product or not!
The acoustic instrument is still plugged in giving the player an unreal acoustic experience which is more akin to playing an electric guitar. The other bit that I can't quite get my head around is that if I buy an Aura box to plug my Fine Resophonic guitars into, the Aura will give me a choice of resonator guitar sounds to choose from that are National Reso-Phonic and Dobro 'samples' or 'modellings'. What will come out of the speakers - my guitar sound, or somebody else's?
I have always been an admirer of your late friend, Douglas Adams, and his wonderful writings. I wonder what he would have made of this? I can think of a few ironic comments that he might have made about a box of tricks that uses millenniums of technological knowledge handed down through generations of the universe's greatest minds to re-create the sound of an acoustic guitar.
I think all these type of devices are useful to people in certain situations. I can see that an acoustic guitar in a loud band would find using modelling machines pretty useful, whereas a solo acoustic guitar (to my ears) gains nothing, just more technology in the way of purity.
I have tried using electric guitar modelling in recording studios. In my opinion It works really well if you are mixing the electric guitar into a track where it is a part of a wall of sound, but if you want the guitar to stand out from the track or be a solo recording, it sounds fake.
I do think all these machines are an amazing way of re-creating sounds very easily at low cost in limited-space home studios, but take it into a world class studio and put it up against thousands of pounds worth of Neumann microphones and great recording engineers and I don't think it stands a chance of competing.
Just my opinion.
Shine On Michael.
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Post by Michael Messer on Mar 27, 2010 13:46:37 GMT
In addition to my last post...
In relation to this thread and ho it started; a Regal RD40 would probably get a better sound plugged in sound with something like the Fishman Aura. I have seen them for £350'ish, which isn't too expensive.
Shine On Michael
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Post by honeyboy on Mar 27, 2010 17:35:43 GMT
Michael, thanks for your reply. I'm not trying to convert you (or anyone else) just trying to draw attention to the following points. 1. If you have a cheap piezo or magnetic pickup (ie not a Highlander iPX) without a preamp and want to improve your amplified acoustic sound, then in all probability a microphone modelling preamp will make a good improvement to your live acoustic amplified sound. (Even the now 10+ year old first generation ones like the Yamaha AG Stomp). 2. The audiophile quality of microphone modelling pre-amps is improving at a rapid rate. The best of the current generation are better than anything one could have even dreamt of 15 years ago, and they will relentlessly continue to improve. 3. If you are a pro user, you can get a custom sound image prepared from your own choice of guitar and microphones. You are therefore hearing the sound of your own guitar sensed through a variety of high end microphones. 4. It would be practically impossible to use a high end Neumann valve condenser mic in a live performance situation, but using this technology, you can easily do so, with inaudible degradation in sound quality. For a live performance situation, this kind of technology is a very flexible and powerful tool. As far as the unreal acoustic experience is concerned, it just depends how high you turn up the volume.. As for Douglas, I think you misunderstand him. He loved technology - he once emailed 'I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand'. ;D
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Post by Michael Messer on Mar 28, 2010 8:42:31 GMT
Hi Honeyboy, Thanks for the information. It is an interesting concept that Fishman will do a 'modelling' of your own guitar, but in my case there is not even a possibility that I would ship my guitar to Fishman to spend two weeks being strummed, picked and recorded by people I do not know (my daughters call these people 'randomers' ). Having had this conversation with you I would like to try the Aura, just to get an understanding of what it is like to use. However, it is not something that interests me at this point as I prefer a microphone to plugging in. In my case I use the SM57 microphone as a part of my stage sound and I have control over the volume and tone by positioning the guitar to control these things. Most modern acoustic players in mainstream areas of acoustic music do not work in this way, and that is what Fishman and other modelling machines are made for IMO. I can see that they have included National Reso-Phonic in their list of available 'modellings' to use, but do we know if there are many NRP players using them. I doubt it. Having said all that I now have to reserve judgement until I actually try one. I am sure I could arrange for a modelling session for MM BLUES & LIGHTNING guitars, but I am not sure if anyone would benefit because of the price of Aura in relation to an MM guitar. Better off to use a Highlander, and in this case the Highlander is the cheaper option. I was not doubting your friend Douglas's attitude to modern technology, just assimilating the type of comment he might have made about the Aura box if he had talked about it in the Hitchhiker's Guide. Shine On Michael.
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Post by jackstrat on Mar 28, 2010 11:01:51 GMT
Hiya lads,
Interesting stuff indeed...no doubt the Fishman Aura is something to aspire to, but certainly at the moment it's a bit out of my price range. There's no doubt that the Regal RD40 would benefit from such a piece of kit, but I must say I was really pleasantly surprised by the improvement in sound via the Fishman pre-amp at about a third of the cost...
Now, having said all of the above, we did a live piece for radio last night, and I took my non-pickup Busker Hobo because I knew it wasn't going to need to plug in - just a couple of mics in the studio. What a sound, wow....loud and full and rich....just lovely. That little guitar has that brilliant thing where you're fighting to reign in the sound...almost having to underplay...just brilliant.
The reason I got the RD40/pickup set-up was so I could have a workhorse guitar to take to gigs and plug in...the learning curve as regards getting decent sounds continues with the introduction of the pre-amp....
Great discussion as always guys...thanks. Niall
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Post by honeyboy on Mar 28, 2010 11:43:30 GMT
Just to finish this off - and to hopefully not mislead anyone, I ought to mention the following important information (which isn't immediately obvious from looking at the Fishman website). 1. Only the programmable pre - amps (i.e. those that come with a dedicated USB connection to your computer) can have custom instrument images uploaded to them. 2. All of the cheaper mic modelling preamps from Fishman (that sell around the $199 dollar mark) come with a set of 'one size fits all' microphone models that can't be altered by the user. They are high quality, but useless for resophonic instruments because they all assume a wood bodied non reso acoustic input. 3. The only way you can currently get the 16 Jerry Douglas Spider Bridge Resophonic images is to buy the Jerry Douglas Signature pedal - These microphone models are not currently downloadable from the Fishman website because of a contractual/marketing decision by Fishman, and are only sold inside this dedicated pedal. For anyone that is interested, the 16 actual microphones modelled by the Jerry Douglas pre-amp pedal are as follows: Image Number - Microphone type - Distance from Instrument 1 - Neumann U67 Large diaphragm tube condensor 12" 2 - Neumann U67 Large diaphragm tube condensor 18" 3 - RCA 77 Poly-directional ribbon 12" 4 - RCA 77 Poly-directional ribbon 12" (Instrument drop tuned to CAFCAF) 5 - Neumann M149 Large diaphragm tube condensor 18" 6 - Neumann M149 Large diaphragm tube condensor 12" 7 - Crowley Tripp El Diablo Figure 8 ribbon 12" 8 - Shure SM81 Uni-directional small condensor 12" 9 - Royer R-121 Figure 8 Ribbon 12" (Instrument drop tuned to CAFCAF) 10 - Neumann U47 Lg. diaphragm cardioid tube condensor 12" 11 - Neumann FET 47 Cardioid FET Lg. diaphragm condensor 12" 12 - Neumann FET 47 Cardioid FET Lg. diaphragm condensor 12" (Instrument drop tuned to CAFCAF) 13 - Crowley Tripp Soundstage Figure 8 Ribbon 12" 14 - Neumann KM84 Small diaphragm cardioid condensor 12" 15 - Shure KSM 32 Side-address cardioid condensor 9" 16 - Shure SM-57 Cardioid dynamic 12" I could be wrong, but there seems to be a 'bit of needle' between Fishman and NRP currently over the sale/availability of some of these microphone/resophonic instrument models. Maybe a gap in the market for a Fishman/MM Fine Resophonic pedal for the poorly served biscuit/tricone players worldwide?
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Post by percythewonderant on Mar 28, 2010 12:05:17 GMT
Speaking for the cheapskate again - Its a shame that nobody pointed him (Jerry D) in the direction of the 'Zoom 504 Acoustic Pre-Amp' as it has a very handy factory pre-set on bank C #4 which is 'Dobro Sound'..... He could have quickly switched to bank b #2 for 'Hawaiian Steel' for a bit of variety. It would have saved him lots of time and expense!
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Post by Gerry C on Mar 28, 2010 17:50:34 GMT
I agree about the Fishman: I have a passive one in my Ozark and without a pre-amp it sounds c**p. However, the pre-amp I use is an old Rock-tek 6-band EQ I bought from a mate in 1992 for a tenner (!!). It still works fine and gives a decent quality of sound - including from my Schatten-equipped MML - on the occasions when I'm FORCED to plug in in a noisy pub. But Nothing beats an SM 57 for live work in a 'listening' room!
Any passive pickup for acoustic instruments requires a pre-amp for a decent level and sound. For most things except my resos I use the Orchid pre-amp made by John Godsland: works on phantom power, has chunky knobs (Stop sniggering at the back!) for treble, mid, bass and volume, mute, and tuner output. Possibly the best single bit of electronic kit I've ever bought...
Cheerily,
Gerry C
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2010 21:12:46 GMT
I have bought on Ebay a Seymour Duncan Pickup Booster pedal. These pedals do things for the electric guitarist that don't concern me but they DO boost the output of a weak pickup without causing any buzz or hum. There is a pot which allows for fine adjustment of the level of boost..
I bought it for the Lace pickup on my Busker Cannon which has a very low output. With this pedal it is as powerful; as it needs to be.
New, I think they are about £80.
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Post by Michael Messer on Mar 28, 2010 21:17:48 GMT
i have just been reading about the Fishman Jerry Douglas Aura and it is very well priced at $250 (USD). For Dobro players that like to plug in that is not expensive.
Shine On Michael.
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