Resonator Pickups

[thunderbird]

Does anyone have any experience / advice in regard to installing a pickup in a single cone biscuit bridge reso? Any recommendations on models?

I've been reading about the Schatten RG-03 which sounds good but a pain in th A to fit. A freind fitted a piezo to his acoustic and that sounds great.

[Deleted]

By common consent, Highlander is the only way to go - expensive ( £200 plus if I recall), but THE way to do it. Don't be influenced by experiences with other pickups on acoustic guitars, resonators are completely different, and are very difficult to amplify properly. And yes, most of them will involve replacing or tinkering with the biscuit to fit the transducer. To be honest, if you can't afford a Highlander, buy a decent microphone and stand. I know this isn't the answer you want to hear, but a lot of pro players use a mic and pickup. The other evening at a local open mike I used my old Regal (with my own confection of internal mike and pre-amp) plugged in to my Sessionette, plus a mic. in front of the guitar thru the PA, and the guy running the gig said, "Wow...at the back of the room that sounds like full stereo, how do you do it?". That's the benefit of using an internal pickup and an external mike, that you tend to get different tonalities from an internal system and external mic., and the two togther can produce a really full sound.

And my other comment - avoid the Fishman passive pickup for biscuit cone - sounds like a biscuit tin full of nails when plugged in. I haven't got one, but I've had to deal with the PA when one of my supporting players plugged his in - dreadfully trebly and thin...we HAD to mike his guitar up as well to get anything like a tolerable sound.

[Deleted]

Hi,

ChickenboneJohn, I've a passive Fishman Doughnut and it sounds fine. But it's absolutely necessary to use an external pre-amp (I use a LR Baggs para DI) and ensure that installation and the tension of the screw on the pickup when fitting is done properly. I had the fitting done by a local luthier who builds his own resonators. It was the first time he had fitted one and he was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out.

For me, the clincher over the Highlander was that by using the Fishman/Para DI combination it's very easy to unplug the resonator and plug in my acoustic (LR Baggs iBeam fitted).

It will be very interesting to see what advice Michael gives. User reviews of acoustic pickups (including resonator types) are invariably mixed. Some people swear by one type while others hate them. I bought a Lace Dobro, which I hated, but some people seem to like them a lot. It's a bit of a minefield.

[Bottleneck John]

These days I never play with PU's..
I just play into a good condenser mic and this works without feedback in all kinds of live situations! Have done more than 100 live gigs with no problem at all soundwise!! But, if a pickup is what you want then there's a whole bunch of them that works very well, most of them needs a preamp to sound ok..
I used the BOSS GE-7 with great results and natural sound!! I've tried the Schatten RG-03 and the Fishman(both passive and active), the Highlander and the McIntyre feather PU, Amistar have their own model and it sounds awesome..

All are good and easy to use, the Schatten is easy to install but have really bad dimensions(too large)
The easiest to install is by far the Fishman passive unit, and it has a great natural sound if you can use a preamp/eq properly, it all depends on this..
This even sounds better than the active Fishman(if used without an extra preamp..) But now I've seen two different models of the Fishman, one (new)big and the old model which was really small so I have no idea how the new one works.

Here's an old recording from a live gig where you can hear the passive Fishman in a Vintage Steel Delphi from NRP:

www.johaneliasson.com/Mp3/comeon.mp3

No microphone used here, just the internal PU.. Through the BOSS GE-7 which is fairly priced and I can highly recommend it!!
It sounds great I think but I got tired of all the cables and stuff needed to amplify this way and I just got me a good condenser and it has worked well for me since so it could be a way for you to go too!!?

Good luck!!

BJ

[Michael Messer]

There have been a few discussions on this forum about pickups and amplifying National guitars - here's my take on it. I have nothing against any of the products mentioned in this thread, what is right for you might not be the one for me.

The ultimate stage amplified National single cone or Tricone sound is a Shure SM57 microphone plugged into a good PA system EQ'ed to keep everything warm and not brittle. The next best thing and the 'industry standard' these days is the Highlander system. It's expensive, but very good and in my opinion is better than anything else on the market. For a really powerful on-stage sound use both a Highlander and a Shure SM57 and mix 30% pickup / 70% mic. This is very good for having two set volume levels for soloing & backup when playing with a band.

Magnetic pickups like the Lace, National, Benedetti....and numerous others, are great if you want that kind of sound. Personally I prefer a magnetic pickup to a poor sounding piezo or similar.

If you do not have the money to buy the products we have all been discussing - you should try cheap tie-clip microphones and just clip or tape it on the coverplate or the F hole. Before the days of 'reso products' lots of people did this weith pretty good results. With an EQ box or a bit of tweaking on the PA amp, a working sound can be achieved with a tie-clip mic.

The best mid priced range of resonator guitar pickups are made by Schatten and although bulky, they are very good value for money and quite easy to fit.

In addition - I would always recommend to people playing small gigs in pubs & clubs to use a small PA system and not an acoustic guitar amp.

Most of the time, apart from when I play a National with a band, I use a mic. Let's hope they never invent pickups & DI boxes for singing!

Shine On,
Michael.

[Bottleneck John]

"..Let's hope they never invent pickups & DI boxes for singing!.."
LMOL..!!!!
Haha, this could be interesting, soon Schatten will release a piezo that attaches to the vocal cords.. Works great with any PA!!

[robn]

Hi Thunderbird,

Just a personal opinion this. I have a Fishman passive fitted to my biscuit bridge reso. I'm not that impressed with it - it needs a lot of external eq/pre-amp work to take the brash sound out of the signal. I don't have an expensive DI box to tame it effectively.

However, I also have a Sure SM57 (£70), a mic stand (£10) and a cheap (£36) Behringer Tube Ultragain Mic 200 pre-amp (which lets me warm up the sound and match the mic to pretty much any line level type of guitar amp or pa input). The whole lot was less than the price of my Fishman passive pickup and sounds way better! Plus, you can put the mic to loads of other uses!

Robn

[thunderbird]

Thanks for the advice guys, great stuff as usual. All things considered, I think I'll go the mic route afterall. Will I need a DI box to enable me to put it through my amp?

[robn]

If your amp has an XLR input, then you probably wont need a DI/pre-amp to mach impedance with the mic. Many "acoustic" guitar amps have an XLR input that a low impedance mic (Sure SM57) will work directly through.

If you plug a low impedance mic into a guitar amp instrument jack without a pre-amp then the signal will be too weak to use.

Some mics (condenser) require phantom power - these certainly need a DI.

I would recommend something like the Behringer Tube Ultragain 100 (about £30) as it will boost the signal from a Sure SM57 and alow you to use the line level (instrument) jack inputs on any guitar amp you own, or can be used direct into a PA system. Plus it has phantom power if you need it. The pre-amp runs through a 12ax7 valve so it warms the sound up, as Michael suggests. They seem to have good reviews for a cheap bit of kit. I've got two of the 200 version (it just has an additional knob to give some flexibility on instrument inputs - but I run them on the straight "valve" setting all the time so I could have got away with the 100 version). Just be aware that they are unbalanced line level output - even if you use the XLR out socket. I've seen some comments that they are noisy pre-amps - but they are actually extremly clean and quiet - unless you plug them into a balanced input!

So the answer to your question is: If you plug your mic into a balanced XLR input you will not need a pre-amp (this includes the balanced inputs on a mixing desk). However, if you plug your mic into an unbalanced input (such as a guitar amp input or PA/mixing desk unbalanced input (normally a jack socket)) then you will need a pre-amp. A tube pre-amp will do the "sound warming" bit so you wont need an expensive eq, just roll off a bit of the treble on the PA or guitar amp.

Good luck

Robn

[thunderbird]

Thanks Robn. What I would ideally like to do is put the signal through my electric guitar set-up as follows:

MesaBoogie V-Twin preamp pedal (Glorious, rich clean channel with 2x12ax7)
Reverb Unit ((just a touch)
HH 50w Combo (TOTALLY transparent solid state amp which compliments the Boogie perfectly!)

Would I still need something in front of the V-Twin?

[LouisianaGrey]

The Schatten is a little quiet without a preamp but nothing like as bad as the passive Fishman. I've plugged a Schatten direct into a combo amp and also into a PA jack input and it worked fine. It tends to be a bit harsher on biscuit bridge than on spider bridge but unlike Robin I've never found it to be so bad I couldn't just plug it straight in. They are a bit fussy about how they're fitted, so that may be the source of the problem. If you want to shape the sound from the Schatten then a graphic EQ pedal will do it nicely.

[robn]

Hi Thunderbird,

I've not used a Mesa Boogie V-Twin. It certainly looks like it could do the job - it has both a gain control for the input and master control for the output. And would be worth a try to see if it will boost your clean signal to line level before you buy anything else. Just go very, very easy if you try out any "blues" chanels - the mic could instantly feed back like crazy!!! That's the problem harp players have (and most use high impedance/low sensitivity mics like the Sure Green Bullet rather than low impedance/high sensitivity like the SM57).

Robn

[Deleted]

Michael , not wishing to incur your wrath, but I'm not sure that Paul Beard or Fishman would agree that the Highlander is the "Industry Standard" .

I quite like this quote from a happy Fishman user on Harmony Central.

"By itself the pickup sounded harsh, BUT in electric guitar terms that's like saying your original '59 LesPaul sounds terrible when plugged into a crappy solid state amp. ACOUSTIC/ELECTRIC PICKUPS REQUIRE A GOOD PREAMP, just like electric guitars require a good amplifier. The tone chain never begins and ends with JUST the pickups - electric or acoustic."

The Highlander has an excellent pre-amp tailored for it and would almost certainly sound poor without it. It also has a nice solution that the power source is external and you don't have the battery inside the body. But I like the flexibility of one external box (Baggs Para DI) controlling a variety of guitars and I'm happy with sound produced for each instrument with its chosen pickup. It also turns out cheaper in the long run.

There is another aspect to whether one should use a mike based system or a pickup, which I've not seen mentioned here. Since starting to play again I've been out to mainly jam and open mic nights, which puts me pretty much at the bottom of the performance food chain. While I can control what guitar I use, I can't control what the guy with the PA is doing. My experience has been that some PAs are excellent, as are the people in charge who understand how to mike up an acoustic instrument (usually the old-timers). Others have a heart attack if they see an instrument without a pickup.

After one particularly bad experience where the guy in charge was clueless about miking up a guitar, I bit the bullet and had a pickup fitted. Hopefully, I may get it together enough so that I'm in a position to control the sound system. Then I'd go for exactly what Michael proposes as the best solution (it's pretty much how I'm starting out with home recording).

But for now it's a compromise and other factors than what may provide the best sound come in. That's what it's like at the bottom - I suppose.

PS. Sorry for the gratuitous Rory reference .

[Michael Messer]

Hi All Around Man, Wrath!!!!! ....me, I don't have one :-)

I would say that as far as National style guitars go, Highlander pickups are the industry standard. Dobro players prefer the McIntire system to any other, so I would say that McIntire is the industry standard for spider-bridge instruments. I have nothing against Baggs or Beard pickups and I know they are cheaper, but I do not believe they have the same quality as Highlanders.

The Highlander systems were specifically designed for National single cone and Tricone guitars and although they are expensive, especially the Tricone system, they are in my opinion the best pickups available for National guitars. Also, the battery lives in a box that is not inside the guitar. It is not a good idea to take cones out to change batteries. Removing a cone should be done as fewer times as possible.

Regarding your point about jams in pubs and plugging in or mic'ing a guitar - Plugging in is always the easier option, especially when the amp is not set properly for mic'ing acoustic guitars. So yes I agree about plugging in. Mic'ing a resonator guitar through a smal PA system is quite simple - EQ>high at -2 /mid at 0 /low at -1 or 2 >set the graphic to a frown and not a smile, turn off reverb on that channel and not too loud....that's it, should sound fine.

I know what it's like at the bottom, don't worry! I did many years of pub gigs and bad PA systems, so I know what it's like! I still play in pubs with friends, I would never give that up.

Keep in touch,
Shine On,
Michael.

[thunderbird]

As allways, thanks for the tips!