Quote:
Originally Posted by open-road-matt
He might be too busy making hit records and selling out stadiums as a solo act to worry about finding a preamp with the right input impedance to match his K&K. 
Just joking around of course but given what he does and where he does it one could argue that this is an appropriate pickup.
An under saddle transducer can give a player a very usable tone that is pretty trouble-proof regardless of the venue and the volume especially in the smaller guitars that he plays.
If you watch some of his looping videos he's using the guitar to produce all kinds of different percussion sounds as well as various guitar parts all while running the signal through a crazy mega-looper/control pedal. My guess (just a guess) is that a UST probably gives him the most response from all of the different parts of the guitar with the least amount of trouble with feedback, weird frequencies, etc.
I think often that we (for sure I do) here on the AGF forget just how small the percentage is of people who know or care a lick about plugged in guitar tone. It's so easy to let "perfect" become the enemy of good. I've spent way too much time, energy and money screwing around with guitar tone forgetting that it has little to nothing to do with making music and getting that music to people.
And while it may sound less than perfect to us guitar nerds some people enjoy the attack and response of an under saddle transducer. I know I do. I've tried just about every pickup on the market and I feel like a UST is best suited for what I do. I recently pulled a Trance Audio Amulet M out of a guitar and installed a DTar Multisource and I'm so much happier with the way that guitar responds to my playing. (And I'm using almost no mic) So his choice could just be personal preference.
Sorry if that's too much! Just trying to spread some UST love! And that is a beautiful little guitar!
Matt |
Couldn't agree more. In fact, there are a fair amount of live sound engineers that have grown so accustomed to the distinctive UST amplified sound (because that is practically all they've heard), that they actually prefer it to say - a more natural sounding SBT. The vast majority of acoustics I hear played at concerts, etc. are all using a UST of some sort.