ToneDexter Thread (continuation of original thread)

[SpruceTop]

Here are two tracks recorded with the ToneDexter for a Martin HD-28 with Trance Audio Amulet M-VT and a Taylor 618e ES2. All EQ was Flat and no Effects were used other than audio amplification to make both tracks louder than the softer levels at which they were recorded. Frankly, I'm not all too happy with my mic placement on these files and will seek out better positioning and make more files of this and other tunes. More to come ...

2014 Martin HD-28 with Trance Audio Amulet M-VT and Shure SM81 into ToneDexter. Particulars: Strings are recommended Martin LifeSpan SP Medium Gage Phosphor Bronze; Pick is Charmed Life Brown (Vespel) .75 mm; Audio interface PreSonus Studio 192 recording at 48/24:


2015 Taylor 618e with ES2 into ToneDexter. Particulars: Strings are Elixir Nanoweb Medium-Light Gage Phosphor Bronze (recommended is Elixir Medium Gage Phosphor Bronze); Pick is Charmed Life Brown (Vespel) .75 mm; Audio interface PreSonus Studio 192 recording at 48/24:
TAYLOR RECORDING REMOVED BECAUSE WHEN I MADE IT I FORGOT TO SWITCH TO THE TAYLOR WAVEMAP ON THE TONEDEXTER WHICH RESULTED IN MY USING THE MARTIN WAVEMAP FOR THE TAYLOR! NOW I KNOW WHY THE TAYLOR RECORDING SOUNDED MUCH LESS THAN I EXPECTED IT TO SOUND!!!

[guitaniac]

Thanks for the demos, SpruceTop. I really like the Trance Amulet/ToneDexter combo, despite the fact that it feels like I'm listening from inside the guitar. I've never before heard an in-your-face guitar recording that sounded that good to me. I usually dislike an inside-the-guitar feel, as I did with the recording which I heard of the Lyric/ToneDexter combo.

[martingitdave]

Sounds good Ken! The Trance and Tonedexter appear to be a great match. The ES2 and Tonedexter sounded good too. I see no reason why anyone should be concerned with using either system with IR.


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[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by SpruceTop

Here are two tracks recorded with the ToneDexter for a Martin HD-28 with Trance Audio Amulet M-VT and a Taylor 618e ES2. All EQ was Flat and no Effects were used other than audio amplification to make both tracks louder than the softer levels at which they were recorded. Frankly, I'm not all too happy with my mic placement on these files and will seek out better positioning and make more files of this and other tunes. More to come ...

2014 Martin HD-28 with Trance Audio Amulet M-VT into ToneDexter. Particulars: Strings are recommended Martin LifeSpan SP Medium Gage Phosphor Bronze; Pick is Charmed Life Brown (Vespel) .75 mm; Audio interface PreSonus Studio 192 recording at 48/24:


2015 Taylor 618e with ES2 into ToneDexter. Particulars: Strings are Elixir Nanoweb Medium-Light Gage Phosphor Bronze (recommended is Elixir Medium Gage Phosphor Bronze); Pick is Charmed Life Brown (Vespel) .75 mm; Audio interface PreSonus Studio 192 recording at 48/24:
TAYLOR RECORDING REMOVED BECAUSE WHEN I MADE IT I FORGOT TO SWITCH TO THE TAYLOR WAVEMAP ON THE TONEDEXTER WHICH RESULTED IN MY USING THE MARTIN WAVEMAP FOR THE TAYLOR! NOW I KNOW WHY THE TAYLOR RECORDING SOUNDED MUCH LESS THAN I EXPECTED IT TO SOUND!!!

I'LL REDO THE TAYLOR 618E TONEDEXTER WAVEMAP RECORDING NEXT WEEKEND, SORRY FOR POSTING THE WRONG PARAMETER RECORDING!!!

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by SpruceTop

[/I]
[/SIZE][/COLOR][/I]I'LL REDO THE TAYLOR 618E TONEDEXTER WAVEMAP RECORDING NEXT WEEKEND, SORRY FOR POSTING THE WRONG PARAMETER RECORDING!!!

That makes sense. I thought something was off. It sounded more like the raw pickup to me.


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[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

Thanks for the demos, SpruceTop. I really like the Trance Amulet/ToneDexter combo, despite the fact that it feels like I'm listening from inside the guitar. I've never before heard an in-your-face guitar recording that sounded that good to me. I usually dislike an inside-the-guitar feel, as I did with the recording which I heard of the Lyric/ToneDexter combo.

Thanks, Gary! I do hear a kind of inside-the-guitar tubbiness to the tone (almost like a Lyric with the bass response we all wish it had), and resulted most likely from my mic placement of which I haven't experimented much with yet. I'll try a few different mic placements on both the Martin HD-28 with Trance Amulet M and the Taylor 618e ES2. Actually, aside from the goof I made in rolling-out the two WaveMaps yesterday and using the Martin WaveMap for the Taylor, when I made the WaveMaps on Saturday the Taylor seemed to generate a better-toned WaveMap with more clarity than the Martin's WaveMap. A player using multiple guitars or instruments for stage work or recording needs to remember that when changing instruments they have to change the ToneDexter to the appropriate WaveMap or they'll get some less than stellar amplified results like I posted for the Taylor.

[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

That makes sense. I thought something was off. It sounded more like the raw pickup to me.


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Yeah, I should have been more careful in keeping track of what I was doing. Frankly, when I made the WaveMaps on Saturday, the Taylor 618e ES2 seemed to generate a cleaner- and more upfront-toned WaveMap than the darker-toned Martin HD-28 with Trance Amulet M. By the way, when I made the Martin's WaveMap I rolled the M-VT Tone and Volume controls both to wide-open. It's cool the way the ToneDexter creates a WaveMap that modifies the very crisp, wide-open Tone-wheel tone of the Trance's M-VT to a more balanced overall frequency response by adding in the mic's information. It would be interesting to experiment with making a WaveMap with the Trance's Tone wheel where I would usually have it when running the Trance alone. Let's face it, the possibilities for a player in finding the most pleasing tone from their instruments are almost endless when considering mic placement and other input factors when generating ToneDexter WaveMaps!

[guitaniac]

Originally Posted by SpruceTop

Yeah, I should have been more careful in keeping track of what I was doing. Frankly, when I made the WaveMaps on Saturday, the Taylor 618e ES2 seemed to generate a cleaner- and more upfront-toned WaveMap than the darker-toned Martin HD-28 with Trance Amulet M. By the way, when I made the Martin's WaveMap I rolled the M-VT Tone and Volume controls both to wide-open. It's cool the way the ToneDexter creates a WaveMap that modifies the very crisp, wide-open Tone-wheel tone of the Trance's M-VT to a more balanced overall frequency response by adding in the mic's information. It would be interesting to experiment with making a WaveMap with the Trance's Tone wheel where I would usually have it when running the Trance alone. Let's face it, the possibilities for a player in finding the most pleasing tone from their instruments are almost endless when considering mic placement and other input factors when generating ToneDexter WaveMaps!

Don't you want to have the tone wheel in a position, when training, that can be easily duplicated when you use the corresponding WaveMap in performance? If you train with an in-between tone wheel setting, it'll be a little harder to find and duplicate that setting when using the WaveMap in performance.

Theoretically, at least, you should be able to get equally good results with a WaveMap created with the treble full down on the pickup's onboard tone control, presuming the tone control is full down when using that corresponding WaveMap in performance. And if it still seems that your Dexterized tone is a little on the bassy side in performance, you'd be able to brighten it a bit by dialing in some treble with your pickup's onboard tone control. Of course, ToneDexter's tone control could also be used for that purpose.

[Doubleneck]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Here's a sample of the ToneDexter with the Barbera UST in a Hamblin GC. This pickup is interesting because the elements are out of phase, so I had to train it by playing single notes and double stops on the 6th, 4th, and 2nd strings only. Mic was a KM184 aimed about at the neck body joint. The first segment is the raw Barbera (a pretty nice sounding UST) with TD bypassed, then I played again with the TD on, EQ flat. For the third segment, I took the TD recording and spruced it up a little in Logic by adding a little EQ (a db or so of low cut and a bit bigger high boost), reverb, and a stereo simulation. This isn't very applicable to live use, but I thought it'd be interested to see how viable TD would be for a recording scenario.

For the EQ I used on the 3rd clip, I used the frequencies the TD offers for tone controls, so I should be able to get that out of TD directly, tho the stereo effect is a recording-only thing.



Planning to try some more experiments shortly...

Don't play out enough to want to buy more electronics, but wow that sounds impressive.

[Wyllys]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Here's a sample of the ToneDexter with the Barbera UST in a Hamblin GC. This pickup is interesting because the elements are out of phase, so I had to train it by playing single notes and double stops on the 6th, 4th, and 2nd strings only. Mic was a KM184 aimed about at the neck body joint. The first segment is the raw Barbera (a pretty nice sounding UST) with TD bypassed, then I played again with the TD on, EQ flat. For the third segment, I took the TD recording and spruced it up a little in Logic by adding a little EQ (a db or so of low cut and a bit bigger high boost), reverb, and a stereo simulation. This isn't very applicable to live use, but I thought it'd be interested to see how viable TD would be for a recording scenario.

For the EQ I used on the 3rd clip, I used the frequencies the TD offers for tone controls, so I should be able to get that out of TD directly, tho the stereo effect is a recording-only thing.



Planning to try some more experiments shortly...

Impressive results.

Swerve/

This reminds me why I've returned every 184 I ever bought. The hyped, brassy mids/upper-mids have detracted from just about everything I've used them on in my work as a sound provider/broadcast engeneer/recordist. They don't ruin everything, but the things they do work for are so lmited as to negate the benefit of owning at the expense of investing in better, more flexible mics such as the Shure KSM141, KSM137 and a host of others.

I think you'd end up doing fewer EQ tweaks using a more suitable mic for the original modeling.

/Swerve

[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

Don't you want to have the tone wheel in a position, when training, that can be easily duplicated when you use the corresponding WaveMap in performance? If you train with an in-between tone wheel setting, it'll be a little harder to find and duplicate that setting when using the WaveMap in performance.

Theoretically, at least, you should be able to get equally good results with a WaveMap created with the treble full down on the pickup's onboard tone control, presuming the tone control is full down when using that corresponding WaveMap in performance. And if it still seems that your Dexterized tone is a little on the bassy side in performance, you'd be able to brighten it a bit by dialing in some treble with your pickup's onboard tone control. Of course, ToneDexter's tone control could also be used for that purpose.

Hi Gary, I'm assuming with the Tone-wheel all the way open that the Trance system is delivering its full-frequency spectrum output. The ToneDexter instructions call for having all EQ flat when generating WaveMaps. Maybe, I should simply dial-in the Trance's Tone-wheel to where the signal sounds balanced with good bass, midrange and treble, which may indicate a flat-frequency EQ, and then generate WaveMaps from that reference tone? I'll try that this coming weekend, along with different mic positions for the Martin and Taylor. I also want to get my RainSong WS1000, with Fishman Matrix UST/Prefix+T, Dexterized as it's a UST-based system. The beauty of using the ToneDexter is that the possibilities for generating great tone are pretty much endless.

[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Here's a sample of the ToneDexter with the Barbera UST in a Hamblin GC. This pickup is interesting because the elements are out of phase, so I had to train it by playing single notes and double stops on the 6th, 4th, and 2nd strings only. Mic was a KM184 aimed about at the neck body joint. The first segment is the raw Barbera (a pretty nice sounding UST) with TD bypassed, then I played again with the TD on, EQ flat. For the third segment, I took the TD recording and spruced it up a little in Logic by adding a little EQ (a db or so of low cut and a bit bigger high boost), reverb, and a stereo simulation. This isn't very applicable to live use, but I thought it'd be interested to see how viable TD would be for a recording scenario.

For the EQ I used on the 3rd clip, I used the frequencies the TD offers for tone controls, so I should be able to get that out of TD directly, tho the stereo effect is a recording-only thing.



Planning to try some more experiments shortly...

Thanks, Doug! The ToneDexter really makes the pickup sound so much better than listening to the raw-pickup tone!

[guitaniac]

Originally Posted by SpruceTop

Hi Gary, I'm assuming with the Tone-wheel all the way open that the Trance system is delivering its full-frequency spectrum output. The ToneDexter instructions call for having all EQ flat when generating WaveMaps. Maybe, I should simply dial-in the Trance's Tone-wheel to where the signal sounds balanced with good bass, midrange and treble, which may indicate a flat-frequency EQ, and then generate WaveMaps from that reference tone? I'll try that this coming weekend, along with different mic positions for the Martin and Taylor. I also want to get my RainSong WS1000, with Fishman Matrix UST/Prefix+T, Dexterized as it's a UST-based system. The beauty of using the ToneDexter is that the possibilities for generating great tone are pretty much endless.

I'm just going by James May's observation that ToneDexter can compensate for a tonal imbalance in the pickup. For instance, a passive UST may lose some bass end when running into ToneDexter's 1 Mohm input impedance, but ToneDexter will compensate for that so that the Dexterized result will (or should) have the same tonal balance as the training mic signal.

In any event, it would be an interesting experiment to make a Wavemap with treble full-on and a WaveMap with treble full-off (using the same training mic position) and see how the Dexterized signals compare with each other. Of course, you'd need to use each WaveMap with the particular tone control setting which was used to create it.


I happen to be obsessed with this particular side topic because Harvey Reid (one of the original Aura beta testers) informed me that custom Aura sound images even compensated for a poorly balanced UST. I'm hoping that its also fundamentally true for the ToneDexter WaveMaps. I have a UST in my old D28 which is way too trebly.

[SpruceTop]

Hi Folks,

I just made a recording of a ToneDexter Wave Map that was generated by my 2015 Taylor 618e Expression System 2 and a Shure SM81 Small Condenser Microphone. The mic placement was about 12-inches out from the guitar's neck-body joint with the mic's capsule pointed toward my picking hand. All EQ was FLAT for both the WaveMap generation and the subsequent recording and NO EFFECTS were used. The recording was made with the ToneDexter's CHARACTER knob fully clockwise for the widest mic image. The recording was made at 48/24 Wave format.

The Taylor has fresh Elixir Nanoweb Medium-Guage Phosphor Bronze Strings installed and is played with a BlueChip TD35 Flatpick. At the end of the recording, I play a D-chord a couple of times to try to demonstrate the wah-wah effect of forearm positioning on the Taylor's top. The wah-wah effect is resident on all Taylor's, from the Mini to the Orchestra models, that have the relief rout which was introduced, I believe, around 2003. All brands of guitars have this effect somewhat but I've noticed newer Taylors have it especially strongly and I attribute it to the relief rout that really enlivens the top's vibrational range. All newer Taylors would benefit, IMHO, from installation of a stick-on armrest such as offered by John Pearse.

The recording is a conflated version of the guitar parts of Neil Young's "Old Man" and is designed to demonstrate the various tonal ranges as rendered by the Taylor ES2/Shure SM81 ToneDexter WaveMap. I'm positive that even better WaveMaps can be generated with more experimentation of mic placement when generating ToneDexter WaveMaps with our guitars! Please know that I have carpal-tunnel in both hands and it can result in any slight misfretting you may hear in the recording.



Below, is the Martin HD-28 with Trance Audio Amulet M Dual Mono and Shure SM81 ToneDexter recording I made a couple of weeks ago, which was made with the Shure SM-81 in the same position as the Taylor but with the Shure's capsule pointed at the neck/body joint. Relative differences in the volume of the Taylor and Martin recordings are because of the recording process and not because one guitar and pickup combination is inherently louder than the other.



Next up for Dexterization will be my RainSong WS1000 with its Fishman Matrix UST/Prefix Plus Preamp and Martin GPC-18E with Aura VT Enhance.

Rather than just the ToneDexterized guitar recordings, in the future I'm thinking I should provide recordings of all three phases of ToneDexter training for each guitar: Raw Pickup, Microphone, and generated ToneDexter WaveMap.

[SpruceTop]

One of my next projects will be to make recordings of WaveMapped guitars through the ToneDexter with the L.R. Baggs Session Acoustic DI in the signal chain following the ToneDexter and before my PreSonus 192 Audio Interface. I'm wondering if the Session DI with its recording-studio-like multiband compression and saturation will add anything positive to the recordings? More to come ...