Barndoor electronics, really work well!!

[BluesKing777]

If you are serious about gigging, it is hard to beat a Maton EBW808 with the fabulous Maton AP5-Pro dual source system onboard!



https://maton.com.au/product/ap5pro-pickup


BluesKing777.

[Petty1818]

Originally Posted by DavidE

Except that it IS people bagging on barn door pickups that were installed by the factory. I saw, and heard, it here when I put up my 90s Taylor 714BLE that came with a factory barn door Fishman system. GASP! Brazilian rosewood violated by that hunk of plastic! It's worth 1/2 of what it would be without the pickup.

Just to clarify, my point was about getting a high end guitar and then cutting a hole in the side for barndoor controls. That makes me cringe. If a guitar comes with it, then it's already been done so it doesn't bother me as much. I still prefer to stay away from the barndoor controls as they look dated, but just wanted to clarify my point.

[Kalani]

Yes, been a full-time gigging musician for 20+ years and barn doors are the way to go for easy plug n play!

I also have 2 ukuleles with barn doors and 1 expensive one without. The expensive one is so difficult to eq on stage and capture/tame all those rich harmonics, whereas I hardly ever have to fiddle with the others.

Friend of mine has a $11,000 custom guitar (no barn door of course) that he takes to open mics/gigs with friends and he’s always struggling to get a good sound. (That’s where outboard preamps like the LR Baggs para DI come in)

[varmonter]

Im not a pretentious nancy. So i dont care what folks do to their axes.They are tools. I have a real nice high end custom shop adi/madi taylor.
I would not install a bd pickup in..
But ive had 2 taylors and one rainsong shorty
That had a fishman bd pickup. Allround great
Gigging guitars. Sound good..easy to adjust onstage. Id use one over an es2 anyday.
I like my outboard floor gear alot and used
It even with the barndoor rainsong i had.
Sounded superb.

[slowesthand]

I have a question. Would it work if I disconnected the ust pickup and hooked a passive sound hole pick up to to the existing barn door set up? Thanks in advance.

[Rudy4]

The big benefit is when the electronics become obsolete you just throw the guitar away and buy another one!

[edward993]

Originally Posted by slowesthand

I have a question. Would it work if I disconnected the ust pickup and hooked a passive sound hole pick up to to the existing barn door set up? Thanks in advance.

Highly likely not. A given preamp is designed to mate with its ust (or whatever pickup design it is). You replacing the Fishman ust for some passive pickup will likely not work. Heck, the impedance mismatch alone would likely yield you no sound. And if you got any sound, I'd be shocked if it sounded decent.

Edward

[SpruceTop]

I dig barn-door systems!

[Skip Ellis]

Sound man? What's a sound man? I've played hundreds (or maybe more) venues over the past 50+ years and never had one or played a place that provided one. Our wives would go out front, listen to sound check and tell us what adjustments to make and we were good to go. We were experienced enough to know when something wasn't right. and, most of those 50+ years were before anybody ever thought about monitors or even knew what they were. Still don't use 'em.

[Nymuso]

I owned a Taylor that had a barn door and always thought it was the best of all worlds in terms of control at your fingertips. I always ignored the nay-sayers because it was what worked for me. They used to decry the idea of a hole in the side of your guitar, yet many of these same people were fawning over the idea of sound ports a few years later.

[Rick Jones]

I gig all of my guitars, and of all of them I've had the huge Yamaha CJX32 (it's a massive, super high-end Yamaha Japanese custom shop maple Jumbo) the longest. I've been playing that one out since 2002 now... 20 years of almost weekly use!

It came with the now obsolete system 45 preamp that receives signals from a Baggs Ribbon Transducer (that I've since replaced with an element due to shielding breaking down) and an onboard condenser mic (which is utterly amazing for high end shimmer, but not great for body percussion).

In the last ten years the pots in the preamp have all failed (after going scratchy first), the battery compartment plastic clip gave up it's springiness and fell apart, and the phase switch got stuck down when I pressed it one day (gently) and it failed to come back up.

I've had it all repaired, as luckily Yamaha have great resources for manuals online and luckily my electronics guy is Japanese by parentage and can read the Japanese manuals, which he says are far more comprehensive than the English versions.

We managed to get a replacement housing and battery box from Japan, but I doubt I'll be able to do that next decade, and I don't want to mess with anything about this guitar... it's seriously amazing, unplugged and plugged in (I also run a MiSi magnetic in the soundhole on a separate output jack). I worry that I won't be able to keep it going.

Takamine (I also have an MIJ Tak with the cooltube onboard preamp) have a great setup in that the preamp module can just eject... they pop out and all of their higher-end barndoors are interchangeable in literally 20 seconds with no tools required.

But keeping my beloved Yamaha going is a worry. I hate the idea of the preamp being a useless and ugly decoration when it fails and I can no longer source the bits for it. It's an otherwise gorgeous guitar. Here are some bad pictures from just now.