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Old 05-30-2019, 03:10 PM
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Methos1979 Methos1979 is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Seacoast, NH
Posts: 8,070
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EvanB View Post
I ordered the Barbera active pickup with onboard tone and volume controls for the ultra-thin 7, and have been very happy with it. Alistair had recommended it and I later found that Kirt Sand uses the Barbera in the Mahogany model. If it's good enough for Mr. Sand it's good enough for me.

I've used B-Band, K&K, Shadow, and various other pickups and liked the active Barbera best. It is part of the X10-OSN thin-bodied electric now in process. It's clean and allows me a great deal of control at the guitar.
The on-board tone and volume controls of the Graphtech saddle pickup system on the X10 is pretty good. I like that each string is individually picked up. I can definitely tell the difference between the K&K's 3-transducer each between two strings setup. The volume control is so non-linear so as to be almost useless but if I dial up a pretty hot signal and then back it off a bit it does allow me some control. The tone knob is much more linear although extremely subtle.

I wasn't crazy about it at first but now that I'm used to it I'm finding that I like it a lot more and especially at louder volumes I use it quite a bit between songs of different volumes and effects levels. It's great for rolling off some of the harshness of the treble strings which already much better than a steel string guitar but this just adds another layer. With my personal setup it's more than enough.

But if I'm trying to just plug & play at an open mic it's not enough unless the person running sound knows how to deal with a fingerstyle player which is surprisingly (and annoyingly) rare. The last time was a bust. Next time I'm going to bring my little Headway EDM-1 and see how that works. Using that straight into my Bose and I can get a great tone so should be doable at an open mic, one would think.
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