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  #1  
Old 03-10-2018, 11:52 PM
stevety stevety is offline
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Default Boss ad 10 pedal board ?

Has anyone tried these pedal board with k and k mini
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  #2  
Old 03-11-2018, 04:12 AM
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No experience, and I'll be very interested to hear from those who have experience of the AD-10 with K&K pickups. BUT, for a start, the input-Z of the AD-10 is a mis-match for the K&K's output-Z by a factor of ten, which doesn't augur well...

The usual disclaimers apply......IMHO, YMMV etc.
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Old 03-11-2018, 02:43 PM
MrErikJ MrErikJ is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JayBee1404 View Post
No experience, and I'll be very interested to hear from those who have experience of the AD-10 with K&K pickups. BUT, for a start, the input-Z of the AD-10 is a mis-match for the K&K's output-Z by a factor of ten, which doesn't augur well...

The usual disclaimers apply......IMHO, YMMV etc.
Doug Young has addressed this issue before and the concept that high-impedance to high impedance can be a mismatch. In terms of megaohm levels of impedance a difference by a factor of 10 is pretty insignificant and a difference in waveform is not measurable. Again, Doug has done tests of passive K&Ks into 1mohm, 10mohm, and 20mohm with no perceivable difference.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the K&K will sound good with this preamp, that’s something that will have to be determined by trial. That said, impedance is unlikely to be the reason for that. An impedance mismatch is high-z into a low-z input, not high-z into slightly higher-z.
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Old 03-11-2018, 04:49 PM
Johnny.guitar Johnny.guitar is offline
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I’ve got an AD10.
I usually use my Taylor but I will plug in a k&k equipped guitar this week and try it out.
Love the AD10 though. Replaced a bunch of stuff with it.
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Old 03-12-2018, 09:44 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrErikJ View Post
Doug Young has addressed this issue before and the concept that high-impedance to high impedance can be a mismatch. In terms of megaohm levels of impedance a difference by a factor of 10 is pretty insignificant and a difference in waveform is not measurable. Again, Doug has done tests of passive K&Ks into 1mohm, 10mohm, and 20mohm with no perceivable difference.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the K&K will sound good with this preamp, that’s something that will have to be determined by trial. That said, impedance is unlikely to be the reason for that. An impedance mismatch is high-z into a low-z input, not high-z into slightly higher-z.
Firstly, I've never heard of Doug Young, so I'm afraid you're casting pearls before swine in mentioning him!

Well, I didn't say it won't work, I said it "Doesn't augur well", which of course means "It might not be suitable" and, on the basis of my own personal experience, I stand by that.

When I first went to K&K pickups, I was told that the Baggs Para-DI (10 Megohms input-Z) was the canine's cojones of pre-amps, so I bought one. I've never been so disappointed, it sounded absolutely dreadful - hugely bloated bass which took a lot of fiddling with EQ to sound even 'reasonable'. Then I was advised, by a guy whose expertise I trust, to get a pre-amp with 1 megohm input-Z. I purchased the Orchid Acoustic Pre-amp, and the difference was night v. day - crystal clear, balanced sound, little or no EQ required. Still using it, or the Orchid Muting DI today.

FWIW, K&K's own pre-amps have an input-Z of 1 megohm. They must know something about their own products, eh?

But, as I said in my earlier post, I have no experience of the Boss AD-10 with K&K pickups, and I'd love to hear from those who have - first hand experience trumps guesswork every time AFAIC.
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Old 03-12-2018, 10:44 AM
MrErikJ MrErikJ is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JayBee1404 View Post
Firstly, I've never heard of Doug Young, so I'm afraid you're casting pearls before swine in mentioning him!

Well, I didn't say it won't work, I said it "Doesn't augur well", which of course means "It might not be suitable" and, on the basis of my own personal experience, I stand by that.

When I first went to K&K pickups, I was told that the Baggs Para-DI (10 Megohms input-Z) was the canine's cojones of pre-amps, so I bought one. I've never been so disappointed, it sounded absolutely dreadful - hugely bloated bass which took a lot of fiddling with EQ to sound even 'reasonable'. Then I was advised, by a guy whose expertise I trust, to get a pre-amp with 1 megohm input-Z. I purchased the Orchid Acoustic Pre-amp, and the difference was night v. day - crystal clear, balanced sound, little or no EQ required. Still using it, or the Orchid Muting DI today.

FWIW, K&K's own pre-amps have an input-Z of 1 megohm. They must know something about their own products, eh?

But, as I said in my earlier post, I have no experience of the Boss AD-10 with K&K pickups, and I'd love to hear from those who have - first hand experience trumps guesswork every time AFAIC.
Doug is a poster here and professional musician and contributor to Acoustic Guitar magazine. He's done a ton of pickup demoing on his website here:
http://www.dougyoungguitar.com/pickuptests/

Doug's talked about it at length here but observations that preamps like the PADI are too bassy with the K&K are probably true, but per his research, the result of preamp circuitry and voicing, not impedance. The PADI was designed to preamplify the Baggs LB6 and not the K&K.

Doug performed a test with the same preamp (Grace Felix) with a passive K&K (and others) and demo'd each with the impedance at 1mohm, 10mohm, and 20mohm. There was no perceivable difference until the impedance was flipped to something in the low-z range (sub 500k), which would be a true mismatch.

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/f...d.php?t=389063

Not that a debate is entirely required for a technical matter but Doug's (and my point) is that your observation regarding tone is not incorrect but that impedance is not to blame. Hi-z is hi-z and if the K&K sounds bad with the preamp, that's more likely due to the design and voicing of that preamp and not a minor impedance difference. James May has made the same observation with the Tonedexter, which has an impedance of 1mohm and he recommends it for all passive or active piezos.

K&K definitely has insight to their pickup and their philosophy is based on the assumption that 1mohm loads the pickups bass & mid frequencies enough to "clean-up" the tone. If that were true, however, the pickup would also be more prone to clipping and tone harshness. 10mohm is usually the "standard" for passive piezo impedance as it provides, in theory, the most headroom for waveforms but in reality, 1mohm is sufficient for most passive piezos and mags.
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  #7  
Old 03-12-2018, 10:54 AM
varmonter varmonter is offline
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my observation on kk has been stick to the
1mgohm . i've had mixed results with others.
even the old standard pendulum sp1 sounded
crappy to me using the kk. i use the felix the
kk pure xlr and orchids muting di with great
results. Ymmv.
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Old 03-12-2018, 12:26 PM
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MrErikJ - thanks for that explanation. The points you've made about circuitry are precisely the reason why I say it 'might work', and why I'd like to hear from anyone with experience of the K&K/AD-10 combination. Fingers crossed...!!
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  #9  
Old 03-12-2018, 12:51 PM
MrErikJ MrErikJ is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JayBee1404 View Post
MrErikJ - thanks for that explanation. The points you've made about circuitry are precisely the reason why I say it 'might work', and why I'd like to hear from anyone with experience of the K&K/AD-10 combination. Fingers crossed...!!
Yep! I used a Baggs PADI with a LB6 and a passive iBeam and it worked really well for both of those but it's designed to. I'm currently using a Tonebone PZ Pre which is a more "universal" and not designed with a specific pickup in mind. I bet Boss probably designed the AD-10 with the same philosophy but...I won't be the first to try
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  #10  
Old 03-12-2018, 09:12 PM
stevety stevety is offline
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Default ?? For Johnny.guitar

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny.guitar View Post
I’ve got an AD10.
I usually use my Taylor but I will plug in a k&k equipped guitar this week and try it out.
Love the AD10 though. Replaced a bunch of stuff with it.
Can you please test k and k mini pickup on the boss ad 10 to see how it works out and leave a review. Thanks stevety
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  #11  
Old 03-14-2018, 12:38 PM
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JayBee1404 JayBee1404 is offline
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Further to the impedance-matching issue, here's what K&K say themselves in their installation guide:-

"Impedance mis-match issue: Acoustic amps and most competitors’ preamps are designed to work best with undersaddle pickups or other very high ohmic piezo pickups. They feature extremely high input impedance (5-10 meg), which boosts the bass response. Most competitors’ pickups need this high input impedance to boost their weak bass response.The Pure has a strong low-end response. It is overkill to boost it.
The Pure sounds best with input impedance like 500 k to 1 meg. If you experience excessive bass response, plug the Pure Pickup straight into the line input of a mixing board -- you’ll see that the excessive bass response is gone."


Supports what I posted earlier. I'll leave it to everyone to draw their own conclusions, just as I've drawn mine...
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Last edited by JayBee1404; 03-15-2018 at 07:00 AM.
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Old 03-17-2018, 09:19 AM
Johnny.guitar Johnny.guitar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stevety View Post
Can you please test k and k mini pickup on the boss ad 10 to see how it works out and leave a review. Thanks stevety


I really only had a few minutes with the k&k and AD10 and didn’t want to totally reset everything. However the input trim had to be turned all the way down or it would start to distort as it’s such a hot pickup. I’m confident you could still use the AD10 as it’s got a ton of eq but it would take some fiddling. That’s what I don’t like about the k&k though. It usually does need a fair amount of eq to get the mids under control.
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Old 03-17-2018, 12:27 PM
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FWIW my boss ad5 has a 4.7M piezo input and a 1.0M magnetic input. Maybe the ad10 has these two inputs as well. I have no experience with k&k
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Old 03-17-2018, 03:15 PM
Johnny.guitar Johnny.guitar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hess View Post
FWIW my boss ad5 has a 4.7M piezo input and a 1.0M magnetic input. Maybe the ad10 has these two inputs as well. I have no experience with k&k


The input impedance is 10M ohms on both channels of the AD10
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Old 03-19-2018, 04:10 AM
Daniel Grenier Daniel Grenier is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny.guitar View Post
I really only had a few minutes with the k&k and AD10 and didn’t want to totally reset everything. However the input trim had to be turned all the way down or it would start to distort as it’s such a hot pickup. I’m confident you could still use the AD10 as it’s got a ton of eq but it would take some fiddling. That’s what I don’t like about the k&k though. It usually does need a fair amount of eq to get the mids under control.
Agreed on all counts. I recently bought an AD-10 (best purchase I have made in years). I have a K&K in my Bouzouki and it is a different animal to tame but it can be done and saved to memory.

The beauty of the AD-10 is that memory feature. You dial in your preferred sound with one instrument and save that to memory and recall each instrument as needed. So easy!
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