Acoustic pickup types and using Impulse Responses.

[Crooner]

Hello to all.
I'm looking at acoustic pickups with the intention of using IRs to achieve a great and controllable tone in live situations. One pickup I like a great deal is the LR Baggs Anthem but in all the videos I've seen of folks using IRs, the acoustic guitars all seem to be using under-saddle piezo pickups. Does anyone know definitively if an under-saddle piezo pickup must be used to get the best result in using IRs or can any kind of pickup be used? Would a piezo/mic blending system like the Anthem work well using IRs?

Thanks for any help!

Cheers,

Crooner

[gfirob]

Tonedexter creates some form of IR and they seem to favor K&K's as far as I can see, thought they say that most non-magnetic pickups work fine. If I understand it correctly, the IR is limited by what the pickup can actually give it to work with, so the better that signal is, the better the final result will be. Undersaddle pickups deliver less than soundboard pickups do, I think. Just my two bits...

[martingitdave]

The ToneDexter IR process seems to work well when the input signal receives body sounds in addition to string sounds. Since the sound board transducer picks up body sounds, there can be some advantages. That said, some sound board tranducer systems are lacking in high frequency information - in some guitar installations. So, there is no universal answer. The K&K and Tondexter appear to be a good match. The Fishman Aura IR process requires the use of the Fishman Matrix to sound best. I would assume most of the generic IRs available on the Internet were developed with commonplace pickups. So, if you want high feedback resistance, more high frequency response, and the ability to use a number of IR systems, a basic Fishman UST is probably a good idea.

[RonD]

I did not have any luck with an Anthem SL and Tonedexter combination. The fixed crossover frequency between the UST and Tru-Mic in the pickup seemed to create a weird hollowness in the resulting sound. You might have better luck with the full Anthem, which could be dialed in to only use the UST portion of the pickup (not an option with the Anthem SL).

As has been stated, the preferred pickups for use with Tonedexter seem to be USTs and SBTs.