Is this a good pickup sound?

[James May]

Originally Posted by Monsum

Thanks James for your comment. Could you shed some light on when we can expected to have more European dealers of the tonedexter, I would be interested in an UK one.

We have a dealer in Switzerland (found on our site), and soon to be one in Netherlands (PM for details).

[Monsum]

Thank you again to everyone expressing their opinions. It helped me rethink my whole signal chain and I've come to some very positive and surprising conclusions. Most of you said that the second sound clip (of K&K mini inside Gibson) was below expectations and I agreed with it and started investigating where it all went wrong - at the end of the day, it should sound great: Gibson Hummingbird, K&K mini and the Red Eye preamp.

Firstly I checked some recordings of the same guitar I made a while ago but when the strings were new. It turned out that the sound wasn't as dull as here, actually it was very bright. So strings make a difference, probably even more in amplified sound than one acoustic one.

Secondly I listened to my another, recent recording of the guitar when I played with drums, a keyboard and singers. The signal chain was the same, like in the test, but the guitar was EQ'ed - boosted highs, deep cut at 1K and HPF from the mixer. The result - everything sounded really good, the guitar sitting perfectly in the mix.

That gave me a thought to try to post-EQ these two test samples to get the best sound I could. And that's where the biggest surprise comes in: it was much easier for me to get a nice sound from the Gibson recording than from the Taylor GS mini one. And honestly after playing around with EQ, compression and IR in Logic, I was never satisfied with what I could achieve with the Taylor/K&K system. On the contrary, the Gibson/K&K after easy fix with EQ sounds excellent, not natural as a microphone recording but like the best examples of piezo/soundboard systems.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Monsum

Thank you again to everyone expressing their opinions. It helped me rethink my whole signal chain and I've come to some very positive and surprising conclusions. Most of you said that the second sound clip (of K&K mini inside Gibson) was below expectations and I agreed with it and started investigating where it all went wrong - at the end of the day, it should sound great: Gibson Hummingbird, K&K mini and the Red Eye preamp.

Firstly I checked some recordings of the same guitar I made a while ago but when the strings were new. It turned out that the sound wasn't as dull as here, actually it was very bright. So strings make a difference, probably even more in amplified sound than one acoustic one.

Secondly I listened to my another, recent recording of the guitar when I played with drums, a keyboard and singers. The signal chain was the same, like in the test, but the guitar was EQ'ed - boosted highs, deep cut at 1K and HPF from the mixer. The result - everything sounded really good, the guitar sitting perfectly in the mix.

That gave me a thought to try to post-EQ these two test samples to get the best sound I could. And that's where the biggest surprise comes in: it was much easier for me to get a nice sound from the Gibson recording than from the Taylor GS mini one. And honestly after playing around with EQ, compression and IR in Logic, I was never satisfied with what I could achieve with the Taylor/K&K system. On the contrary, the Gibson/K&K after easy fix with EQ sounds excellent, not natural as a microphone recording but like the best examples of piezo/soundboard systems.

Honestly to me in my ear buds on my laptop it sounded as if there is a level mismatch between the two clips. And (maybe I missed on my quick read of the replies) kinnd'a surprised no one mentioned it

Haven't measured it but I would guess the second clip is from 3 to 5 db higher in level . Which easily sufficient to throw doubt into an accurate comparison
As such I would not make any decisions or changes based on that sample..... as a level mismatch pretty much invalidates any critical assessment .

Now everything everybody is saying may be accurate but ..Honestly before you do anything I would try it again with the levels matched as close as possible

[Amar911]

I have two GS Mini guitars, one with a JJB (K&K type) pickup and the other with the Taylor factory UST. Both guitars sound very good acoustically. The JJB equipped Mini sounds much better amped, although with more propensity for feedback than the one with the UST. I've always been surprised how good a GS Mini sounds for the price. That said, there are some significant limitations when compared to my much more expensive guitars, especially one of my Collings OM-2s that has K&K pickups. It is one of my best, most natural sounding guitars amplified, and it sounds fantastic acoustically. I also have a Red-Eye Twin preamp that adds somewhat to the good tone and gives me additional options, including multiple instrument inputs, a boost feature, a DI, and an effects loop. I have been looking at the ToneDexter and think it may be a much more reasonable solution than searching for the other amplification devices to improve tone. For under $600 I could get the ToneDexter and a Slate ML-2 mic delivered to my door, and I don't have to install them in a guitar or use them only with one instrument. The Red-Eye costs $300, which is only $100 less than the ToneDexter, I need a mic like the ML-2 for other purposes anyway. So the ToneDexter route seems almost cheap by comparison. My next pickup was going to be the Trance Amulet that is $300 without the cost of installation (and that cost will be fairly high with shipping my guitar and labor). Even if another pickup sounds good, the reviews and videos suggest that ToneDexter significantly improves the amplified tone. How about if we spend your money instead of ours and let you buy a ToneDexter to see if it solves your problems? I'd sure like for you to have your Gibson sound the way you'd prefer. It's frustrating to spend all that time, money and effort and get poor results. By the way, the GS Mini sounds far better to me in your recordings.

Questions for James May: When using the Red-Eye Twin, can the ToneDexter be used on the output side of the Red-Eye and switched to a different WaveMap for each instrument? What would happen if two guitars with similar pickups were combined on the output side of the Red-Eye? I assume the combined input would mess up the WaveMap processing?

[AeroUSA]

Originally Posted by Monsum

Thank you again to everyone expressing their opinions. It helped me rethink my whole signal chain and I've come to some very positive and surprising conclusions. Most of you said that the second sound clip (of K&K mini inside Gibson) was below expectations and I agreed with it and started investigating where it all went wrong - at the end of the day, it should sound great: Gibson Hummingbird, K&K mini and the Red Eye preamp.

Firstly I checked some recordings of the same guitar I made a while ago but when the strings were new. It turned out that the sound wasn't as dull as here, actually it was very bright. So strings make a difference, probably even more in amplified sound than one acoustic one.

Secondly I listened to my another, recent recording of the guitar when I played with drums, a keyboard and singers. The signal chain was the same, like in the test, but the guitar was EQ'ed - boosted highs, deep cut at 1K and HPF from the mixer. The result - everything sounded really good, the guitar sitting perfectly in the mix.

That gave me a thought to try to post-EQ these two test samples to get the best sound I could. And that's where the biggest surprise comes in: it was much easier for me to get a nice sound from the Gibson recording than from the Taylor GS mini one. And honestly after playing around with EQ, compression and IR in Logic, I was never satisfied with what I could achieve with the Taylor/K&K system. On the contrary, the Gibson/K&K after easy fix with EQ sounds excellent, not natural as a microphone recording but like the best examples of piezo/soundboard systems.

Can you post your EQ settings please..

[Monsum]

Originally Posted by AeroUSA

Can you post your EQ settings please..

The EQ settings I used are nothing unusual, on my mixer I'm quite limited, so I applied HPF (I think it rolls off at 80Hz), then took off 5,6 dB of the low frequency at 100 Hz, then a deep cut at 1kHz, probably about 10 dB. I don't know how wide the filter is, it's fixed and then increased high freq. at 10kHz by 3,4 dB.
With other instruments and vocals, the guitar with the above EQ and some reverb sounded more than adequate.

But to sound more natural it's still needs some additional EQ correction, so because I don't have any EQ effect other than what's available in the mixer I did a 'trick'. In the Red Eye preamp there is an effects loop to which I connected a Behringer MIC200 preamp with EQ voicing set at Bass guitar (this particular one seemed to be best with my acoustic), also I turned up the treble control of the Red Eye. That gave very good results. To be even more adventurous, instead of the Behringer I used the iRig Acoustic Stage preamp but without its microphone but only the EQ processing. If you are familiar with the iRig, it has three settings (natural, warm and bright), both natural and bright settings brought something nice to the tone.

I think (someone said it in this thread before) an electro-acoustic guitar doesn't sound good on headphones or small monitors no matter what, both a proper PA or a dedicated amp PLUS the reflections of the room make an important difference as well.

In my DAW I played around with EQ, compression and reverb to improve the Gibson soundclip from my first post in this thread (it's the same recording) and I came up with something that sounds good (in my opinion), have a listen: