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Old 05-14-2022, 02:34 PM
SpruceTop SpruceTop is offline
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Default DEMO: Ibanez ADD300CE Grand Dreadnought with Dual-Source Magnetic/K&K-Style Pickups

I just recorded my new Ibanez AAD300CE Grand Dreadnought with its dual-source AP11 Magnetic and K&K-style SBT pickups. The two Volume Controls enable a player to blend the relative amounts of signal from each pickup system into the overall output mix, Also, each pickup system can be completely dialed out of the mix for enabling a player to provide a decent amplified tone under less than ideal venue conditions.

Acoustically, this $800 ax is tonally well-balanced with medium volume output and sounds better than my long-gone Epiphone DR-500 MCE for about the same price. The Ibanez doesn't come with a hardshell case so figure in another $150 for a good-quality case.

The guitar is a well-crafted combination of a nice solid spruce top with laminated Okuome back-and-sides (yeah, that wood is a new one to me too). Anyway, I had to make a neck-relief adjustment to the guitar and may pull the saddle and sand a bit off the bottom for an action adjustment. My only niggling comment would be that I wish Ibanez had increased the string spacing at the nut to make thumb-fretting easier on this guitar's nice neck profile (my $5000+ Adamas I 2087GT sufferers the same nut-cut for me!).

Sound Samples: The first three sound samples were made with what I heard as a decent blend of the SBT and Magnetic pickup signals. Would this blend vary under different room conditions? Probably. The Jerry Jeff Walker "Maybe Mexico" song-segment samples are placed in order with the blended pickup signal first, followed by the SBT-only demo, and finally the AP11 Magnetic pickup only. All song segments are played with a Guitar Moose .88 mm flatpick except the first one which is a finger-picked "April Come She Will" song segment. My demo strategy is to play songs that have segments of them played up the fingerboard into the region where a magnetic pickup will come on strong with the typical E-1st and B-string honk. IMHO, the AP-11 Magnetic pickup sounds good and isn't any worse than any magnetic pickup out there and serves to round out the system's overall blend when added just right.

ALL SOUND SAMPLES ARE MADE WITH FLAT EQ AND NO EFFECTS! Both onboard pickup systems in this guitar are a bit Bass-heavy in the 100 Hz region and would likely benefit from an overall -3 dB to -5dB narrow Q adjustment for most venues.

My overall evaluation of this guitar and its dual-source pickup system is: If you're not committed to the name on the headstock, this would be a nice choice as a bar-/club-/restaurant-guitar!

As usual please excuse my sloppy 72-year-old, crippled hands playing efforts. Thanks For Looking In!

YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME AND APPRECIATED!

"April Come She Will" FINGERPICKED Blended Pickups:



"Who Do You Love?" FLATPICKED Blended Pickups:



----

FLATPICKED COMPARISON:

"Maybe Mexico" FLATPICKED Blended Pickups:



Maybe Mexico" FLATPICKED SBT K&K-Style Pickup ONLY:



"Maybe Mexico" FLATPICKED AP11 MAGNETIC Pickkup ONLY

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Last edited by SpruceTop; 05-14-2022 at 03:22 PM.
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Old 05-14-2022, 02:46 PM
jricc jricc is offline
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Thanks for the demo Sprucetop! I'd say it's a nice sounding system. The blended demo is real nice and full sounding, although I liked the mag on it's own as well.

The first two demos of Who Do You Love are acoustic only first and blended second? If so, pretty close sounding on my monitors.

Thanks again for doing this.
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Old 05-14-2022, 03:02 PM
SpruceTop SpruceTop is offline
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Originally Posted by jricc View Post
Thanks for the demo Sprucetop! I'd say it's a nice sounding system. The blended demo is real nice and full sounding, although I liked the mag on it's own as well.

The first two demos of Who Do You Love are acoustic only first and blended second? If so, pretty close sounding on my monitors.

Thanks again for doing this.
Joe, Thanks! The first two segments I initially posted had 'Who Do You Love" in both the first two slots and left out the actual file for "April Come She Will"--My Bad. I've since remedied my initial gaff.
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Old 05-14-2022, 07:48 PM
Marty C Marty C is offline
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Spruce Top. that sounds really good. I honestly didn't expect that. Nice, full and warm and the Magnetic seems to add a little sparkle. And was flat settings, which means there room to adjust further, if needed.

How does it play?

Thanks for sharing this with us.
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Old 05-15-2022, 07:01 AM
CASD57 CASD57 is offline
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Hopefully I can play that well at 72

I really like the blended...Sounds great
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Old 05-15-2022, 08:38 AM
SpruceTop SpruceTop is offline
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Originally Posted by Marty C View Post
Spruce Top. that sounds really good. I honestly didn't expect that. Nice, full and warm and the Magnetic seems to add a little sparkle. And was flat settings, which means there room to adjust further, if needed.

How does it play?

Thanks for sharing this with us.
Thanks, Marty! The guitar came with factory-installed D'Addario XTAPB1253 light-gauge phosphor bronze coated strings and I've got the guitar adjusted to play pretty well. In another week, after the guitar settles in, I may make an action adjustment by removing a bit off the bottom of the saddle. Overall I'm quite pleased with this ax.
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Old 05-15-2022, 08:49 AM
SpruceTop SpruceTop is offline
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Originally Posted by CASD57 View Post
Hopefully I can play that well at 72

I really like the blended...Sounds great
Thanks! The neat thing about this guitar is that it has two output jacks: the endpin/strap button jack supplies a mixed output of the pickups, and the other jack is a stereo output enabling the separate output of each pickup into separate input channels on a mixer. This enables a player to separately adjust the EQ for each pickup and remix the EQ-adjusted blend or feed two separate amps, one for each pickup. This means a player could have electric guitar effects like distortion set up for the AP11 Magnetic pickup while maintaining purer acoustic tones with the K&K-like SBT. This makes this guitar kind of versatile for doing a mixture of various kinds of songs in a set.

Ibanez AAD300CE Grand Dreadnought with Advanced Access Cutaway body https://www.ibanez.com/usa/products/...0ce_1x_03.html







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Last edited by SpruceTop; 05-15-2022 at 09:00 AM.
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Old 05-15-2022, 09:06 AM
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Hi ST…
Sounds a lot like a guitar.




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Old 05-15-2022, 01:09 PM
SpruceTop SpruceTop is offline
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Hi ST…
Sounds a lot like a guitar.




Thanks, Larry!

I'm really pleased with the amplified tone of this Ibanez AAD300CE. When blended to my taste, the AP11 Magnetic pickup adds just enough roundness and fullness without any electric-guitar sounding artifacts to my preference for the mainstay tone of the K&K-style SBT. The amplified blended combination sounds very acoustic-guitar-like to me. This prompts me to ask myself: Why wouldn't I want to use this $800 guitar for my go-to live-performance pickup-based tone? Answer: No reason.
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Old 05-16-2022, 07:47 AM
JackB1 JackB1 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SpruceTop View Post
Thanks, Larry!

I'm really pleased with the amplified tone of this Ibanez AAD300CE. When blended to my taste, the AP11 Magnetic pickup adds just enough roundness and fullness without any electric-guitar sounding artifacts to my preference for the mainstay tone of the K&K-style SBT. The amplified blended combination sounds very acoustic-guitar-like to me. This prompts me to ask myself: Why wouldn't I want to use this $800 guitar for my go-to live-performance pickup-based tone? Answer: No reason.
My answer would depend on how comfortable it was to play this large dread body for 3-4 hours. I need both tone and comfort.
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Old 05-16-2022, 03:42 PM
SpruceTop SpruceTop is offline
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I'll post more demos next weekend of the guitar's output properly EQ'ed. In the raw FLAT EQ of the present demos, the AP11 Magnetic pickup needs about a -3dB to -5dB cut at around 100Hz with narrow Q to lessen the bass boominess, The K&K-like SBT is pretty good as is but I'll investigate it further. I'll do my demo with the guitar's stereo output split into the separate channels of the FELiX 2, EQ them, and then, mix them back together for recording.
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Old 05-16-2022, 03:46 PM
SpruceTop SpruceTop is offline
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Originally Posted by JackB1 View Post
My answer would depend on how comfortable it was to play this large dread body for 3-4 hours. I need both tone and comfort.
Hi Jack, Thanks for looking in! How do you like your Martin SC13e?

For me, I've generally played dreadnoughts for 4 sets a night back in the day. Fortunately, I don't have any shoulder issues or whatever else to keep me from playing one now and this Ibanez is really comfortable for its size.
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Old 05-17-2022, 09:25 AM
JackB1 JackB1 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SpruceTop View Post
Hi Jack, Thanks for looking in! How do you like your Martin SC13e?

For me, I've generally played dreadnoughts for 4 sets a night back in the day. Fortunately, I don't have any shoulder issues or whatever else to keep me from playing one now and this Ibanez is really comfortable for its size.
Love my SC13e (with an Anthem SL) for gigs, but now I also just picked up a Cole Clark Thinline which may take away the #1 gig guitar position. Great stock pickup system with all kinds of adjustability and even slightly thinner body than the SC13e. For the time being I am going to try both and eventually decide on one as the primary gig guitar. I don't have a shoulder issue, but I play lots of long gigs and the easier a guitar is to play and hold for hours, the better. Sure I could play a full size dread or jumbo for a 3 hour gig, but why? When plugged in, the only things that matter are the sound coming out of your speakers and how it feels and plays for you.
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Old 05-20-2022, 07:05 AM
leew3 leew3 is offline
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thanks for the demo and I agree with others that this sounds great and would be a very usable guitar for many applications.
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Old 05-20-2022, 11:43 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SpruceTop View Post
For me, I've generally played dreadnoughts for 4 sets a night back in the day.
I used to be able to do a lot of stuff back in the day that I can't now

I have a double header coming up on Sat - 2 hour solo gig, then 3 hour duo (on bass for the second). Back in the day double headers were easy peasy. These days, I know I'll need to ice my right elbow while driving to the 2nd gig and have ibuprofen on tap.

That said, getting old it better than the alternative.

fwiw, the SBT didn't seem to have the low end push that a K&K typically does. The two pups blend pretty well.
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