The "(un)importance" of acoustic traits when amplifying?

[bufflehead]

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

The bigger the venues, and the more gain you'll use (is there a sax in the band?) the smaller and/or 'deader' the guitar will need to be to work out.

Saxophones! Ugh. Playing in a band with a sax is like kissing on a rollercoaster. It can be done, surely, but is it really worth the risk to all that dental work?

[Jabberwocky]

A 5-year old video and it is Youtube with its compression and what appears to be a smartphone recorder albeit.

Do you buy the sales pitch? Is the amped tone no different from the unamped €10 000 euro Ryan guitar?

I hear the artificial reverb to plump up the amped tone. I hear the low fidelity of the PA speakers and amp. I hear the blunted rise time of the notes and the truncated decay aided by the electronic reverb. I hear all tone subtlety stripped out of the original Ryan guitar. Inoffensive, yes. Like the Ryan? Far from it. It like tasting Velveeta after good Gorgonzola or Roquefort.

And that is the con: we hear an inoffensive "acoustic" tone and see the label on the guitar and make an association between the guitar and the low-fidelity tone coming out of the speakers. The human ear-mind has an incredible ability to fill in the blanks, particularly with experienced guitar players. We do hear what we want to hear. Close your eyes and forget about the auto-suggestions of €10 000 price tag and the claim that the amped tone is the same as the guitar tone. Even over Youtube, you will hear the lowfi simulation.

The good news is, you could put this thing in a $250 geometrically well-constructed guitar (good intonation and a good neck) and get pretty much the same tone. You don't need a €10 000 Ryan if you are going to desecrate it with this system.

Sitting out in the audience, without being able to see the label on the guitar, nobody would have an inkling of what is being played. It sounds "acoustic" and if it is played by a good player, nobody but a guitar player cares. A good friend of mine gigs with the Yamaha Silent Guitar. He played a trick once where he stood behind another player in the darkness of backstage and the guy in front was just hand-synching along with him with a muted expensive guitar (brand withheld to avoid accusation of brand-bashing). The guitar players in the crowd were going, What a great sounding XYZ! Honestly, I thought XYZ guitar sounded great until they let me in on it. I wasn't too pleased but point taken.

Association is a powerful thing.

I get it that it is important to a player that he play a guitar that he likes, even a €10 000 one or more. To the player with the guitar in his lap, he gets the direct acoustic tone out of his guitar. And there is the feel-good factor of playing one's treasured guitar. But if all one cares about is the amped tone qua amped tone through the PA, with these stick-ons and USTs, don't waste your money on an expensive box. We are fooling ourselves. But do get a great set of strings because to a UST or stick-on the strings do matter.

PS MP3 compression is based on a widely sampled test (don't have the stats) that the majority cannot hear the difference between a compressed signal and a 44.1Khz oversampled signal. The mind fills in a lot of missing information.

[Charmed Life Picks]

I've hated pickups my whole life. I play a lot of solo open mics, and if possible I ALWAYS throw a mic out front. There's not a pickup on the planet that sounds as good as playing live into a $100 Shure mic.

scott memmer

[SuperB23]

I've found that if you have a great sounding instrument acoustically that if you install a good pickup and plug in to a good preamp that you get amazing plugged in sound!

[gfirob]

Amazed nobody brought up the Tonedexter in this post. If you care about the sound of the guitar (which usually means you paid a lot for the guitar) and you play out, most players want to hear as much of that excellent guitar as they can. The guitar (for a solo player) is half the act. Playing with mikes is the best but is fraught with issues—feedback, maintaining position, and the mike itself (if you don't or can't supply your own). The Tonedexter makes most pickups sound almost like a microphone. In this sense you can have the quality of the instrument and the volume too, in most situations. Some performers really don't care that much about the tonal quality of the guitar and god bless them, but most players really do, especially if they have invested in a high-end instrument.

[Charmed Life Picks]

Originally Posted by gfirob

Amazed nobody brought up the Tonedexter in this post. If you care about the sound of the guitar (which usually means you paid a lot for the guitar) and you play out, most players want to hear as much of that excellent guitar as they can. The guitar (for a solo player) is half the act. Playing with mikes is the best but is fraught with issues—feedback, maintaining position, and the mike itself (if you don't or can't supply your own). The Tonedexter makes most pickups sound almost like a microphone. In this sense you can have the quality of the instrument and the volume too, in most situations. Some performers really don't care that much about the tonal quality of the guitar and god bless them, but most players really do, especially if they have invested in a high-end instrument.

I've heard a lot about this unit. I'm pretty old school and really love the analog world, but where my roots are, but we shall see.

sm