Making the K&K sound better in a loud Martin

[martingitdave]

This is a repost of a reply I made in another thread.

Volume

Tuning your pickup sound is most effective if you simulate the volume (or close to it) that you would use at a performance or gig. Don’t wait for everyone to go to bed and turn the volume up to "one" on the amplifier. I also don’t recommend using headphones to do the tuning. It never sounds the same as a gig. Everything sounds different at stage volume.

Also, here is my warning on volume. When you were a little child, the adults probably told you not to use your teeth for anything but chewing. “You only get one set of teeth. Don’t break them biting the off bottle tops!” Well folks, just like your teeth, the cilia in your inner ear (responsible for your hearing) do not regenerate. When you kill them with loud noise, they are gone forever. Don’t be stupid. Don’t turn the powered speakers up to over 100 dB to “get over the crowd.” All you are doing is killing your hearing and theirs. Play better music and be more interesting. And, I find that if I turn the music down, people will get quieter. Beating people’s ears into submission with your lively rendition of “Margaritaville” is a loose-loose proposition.

Impedance

Much has been written on the topic. Simply put, try to use preamps that have an input impedance of 400KOhm to 1MOhm. Too little impedance and you get too little bass. Too much impedance and you get too much bass. And, we're talking about losing or gaining information for the whole low end below 250 Hz. For this discussion, I am using the TC Helicon Play Acoustic (TCPA) pedal which includes a 1 MOhm input impedance, robust parametric EQ function, along with notch filter, phase, and a few other goodies.

Parametric EQs:

For the TCPA, If you go into the setup menu and choose advanced editing for body rez you will get the following EQ toys to play with:

Low shelving EQ

High shelving EQ

(2) Parametric mid frequency controls.

These toys, plus some sort of ambiance reverb effect which I assume is used to increase sustain, are "BodyRez." And, yes, you can do this on your own if you want to. But, they generally do a nice job of knowing where the hot spots are.

If you are not familiar with a parametric EQ, they can seem a little intimidating. But, armed with a little background, it's actually quite simple.

Here is a link to explain how a parametric EQ works:

https://www.wikihow.com/Use-a-Parametric-Equalizer

My recommendation for EQ it to use it surgically. I seldom add. I use it to take away.

TC Helicon Tricks for EQ

TC seems to do somethings a little different from others. They like to use two mid frequency bands with a Q of 2.04 centered around ~500Hz and ~900Hz. These two work in tandem to create a wave shape in the mid that eats away at the annoying frequencies pickups produce. You can use one or both. Most analog parametric EQ products use a wider bandwidth Q of 1.0. In my experience, the ~2 range is actually better. So, here I agree with TC Helicon. That said, all of this is totally adjustable to your taste.

What I do:

1. I use a compact PA system with a built in digital mixer. It includes a real time analyzer function that lets you visualize the frequencies in real time. You can get an idea of where you might need to notch for feedback, or where you might have some spikes in your signal that need to be tamed.

2. Play through the 5 Body Rez shapes and pick the one that sounds the best to you overall. This is just a starting point. Don't get too hung up on perfectionism.

3. Go to the advanced pages in the menu. Start with the shelves. If you want a little more bottom end, or top end, start by bumping the gain 1-2 dB at a time and play a little. Once you get it where you generally like it, try moving the shelf frequency a few clicks in each direction. When you increase the low shelf you are starting the bass boost a little "earlier" and vice versa.

4. The mids is where the money is. When you cycle through those 5 pre-programmed settings to choose which you like better, mostly you are hearing the result of the sweepable mids. Just like the shelves, you can play with these too. It's important to make one change at a time and play a little to hear what you've done. For instance, you can decrease the Q value to make the cut wider. Or, like in my case, I will shift the center frequency for the mid cut a few clicks in either direction and listen with each click. You'll be surprised what a 40 Hz shift can make. If you want to net out a cut altogether, you can just change the gain to zero, and it is effectively off.

What I think a K&K needs:

This is debatable, but what I hear is this:

1. The K&K acts sort of like an internal microphone. It picks up a lot of low and low mid frequencies that are bouncing all around the inside of the guitar and reflecting off the back, etc. This is unlike an under-saddle pickup that mostly "hears" the strings. I call this "mud."

2. People argue that the K&K is all mud and no highs. I agree to a certain extent. But, like a mic, once you surgically remove the mud from the signal you can suddenly hear all the highs that have always been there, but where hidden under the mud.

3. Depending on the guitar, I hear at least two "humps" of mud. One hump in in the low end (below 250Hz or 150 Hz in feedback range) and a second hump in my dreadnought shaped guitars around 800 Hz. The first hump is usually due to the resonant frequency of the guitar. The second I attribute to listening from inside the guitar. Once you remove those, it sounds much more natural to me and the highs start to come through. This is important because most mixing boards have a wide Q mid frequency adjustment that is centered around 2.5KHz. That's way too high to be effective at removing any mud from the K&K. And, the lows are centered around 80Hz, which is way too low for the shelving filter to be effective. That's why lots of players opt for mixers with a sweepable mid frequency.

4. Some might hear a third hump around 1KHz, 1.5KHz, or 2KHz. I would be hesitant to cut much up at the higher mid frequencies because those help a pickup cut through the noise.

5. The highs might still be a litle too weak to cut through the mix, so feel free to bump those a dB or several according to taste.

OR

Buy a ToneDexter. It has the equivalent of 2000 parametric EQ bands that get automatically set by the computer to mimic what it hears from a microphone. It does this magic in about 2 minutes, and it doesn't cost much more than most of the parametric EQs out there. And, as a bonus, it was designed for 1MOhm impedance because the creator is a fan of the K&K style pickup.

Either way, you'll be doing fine from the audience's perspective.

[EdEd]

Going into an acoustic amp... like an Ultrasound (I have both AG50 and AG30) or Fishman, every K&K I have installed sounds great just going straight in. Going into a PA, using many preamps, K&K, Red Eye, etc. they sound great.

Ed

[gfirob]

Sounds like a pretty good argument for a Tonedexter. I think a lot of people accept the untreated sound of the K&K's or its sound treated with some eq, but they have rarely heard what the Tonedexter can do. It is really worth a little research, because (for most users) it takes you very, very close to how your acoustic guitar actually sounds through a microphone. Not for everybody and not for every situation, but it's far and away the best and simplest way to go, in most cases IMHO.

[EdEd]

I have had more than one K&K install that I thought had gone wrong until I turned the amp off or unplugged the guitar. The only difference was volume... and that’s with no external boxes.

Ed

[BluesKing777]

I too have been reacquainting and re-imagining, Dave!

(Next door have had a pool installed and paving, landcaping, garden and the noisy, noisy works have taken about 100 years, well, at least 7 or 8 weeks)

So I have scared the spider family out of the old Genz Benz 60 Watt Stereo amp, after I read someone else talk about using a similar amp. There are too many details to list so here is the user manual - worth looking at:

http://www.genzbenz.com/img/manuals/gb/shen-60.pdf


It just works! Especially for K&K Minis!

So it has 'active eq', we are told..but it has great sweepable mids for acoustics. So currently I have been getting more detail without annoying the whole street by plugging in my everyday Sennheisers to the back and adjusting, adjusting to taste....then try it with the speakers on.

So the current state of play playing my Lowden S35 with K&K Mini - cut the bass to 10 o'clock, cut the treble to 9 o'clock, sweep the mids to suit...and the guitar is taken care of!

Then I plugged in my Shure SM58 in the other channel, wind her up and add a fair slice of room reverb preset. EQ dead flat! Great!

This is ready! It currently sounds so good with the K&K that it is NOT leaving my side! Glue those knobs down - and nobody come near my amp! Heavy thing though, but it does have the wedge cutout so it will lean back like a foldback wedge!

Next up, I grab the Martin 000-17 with a Martin Thinline passive undersaddle Piezo to hear the worst and .....it sounds good. What? It is a hot undersaddle, but it must be a good impedance match or something.....who knows anything anymore - I hate piezo undersadde quackers.


A few days to recover and then we want to run both these guitars through Tonedexter and then to the amp. Turned my previous pickup gain setting up? to match the volume of the K&K straight in and set the image blend at 77%.

Fabulous! Did not touch the previous amp eq setting!


BluesKing777.

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by BluesKing777

I too have been reacquainting and re-imagining, Dave!

(Next door have had a pool installed and paving, landcaping, garden and the noisy, noisy works have taken about 100 years, well, at least 7 or 8 weeks[emoji33])

So I have scared the spider family out of the old Genz Benz 60 Watt Stereo amp, after I read someone else talk about using a similar amp. There are too many details to list so here is the user manual - worth looking at:

http://www.genzbenz.com/img/manuals/gb/shen-60.pdf


It just works! Especially for K&K Minis!

So it has 'active eq', we are told..but it has great sweepable mids for acoustics. So currently I have been getting more detail without annoying the whole street by plugging in my everyday Sennheisers to the back and adjusting, adjusting to taste....then try it with the speakers on.

So the current state of play playing my Lowden S35 with K&K Mini - cut the bass to 10 o'clock, cut the treble to 9 o'clock, sweep the mids to suit...and the guitar is taken care of![emoji3]

Then I plugged in my Shure SM58 in the other channel, wind her up and add a fair slice of room reverb preset. EQ dead flat! Great!

This is ready! It currently sounds so good with the K&K that it is NOT leaving my side! Glue those knobs down - and nobody come near my amp! Heavy thing though, but it does have the wedge cutout so it will lean back like a foldback wedge!

Next up, I grab the Martin 000-17 with a Martin Thinline passive undersaddle Piezo to hear the worst and .....it sounds good. What? It is a hot undersaddle, but it must be a good impedance match or something.....who knows anything anymore - I hate piezo undersadde quackers.


A few days to recover and then we want to run both these guitars through Tonedexter and then to the amp. Turned my previous pickup gain setting up? to match the volume of the K&K straight in and set the image blend at 77%.

Fabulous! Did not touch the previous amp eq setting!


BluesKing777.

What a great story. Sometime we can reunite with older gear and remember how great it was. It sounds like you had a great experience with that amp. Hopefully, it’s not too heavy.

The books says your unit operates on 300 kOhm which is pretty close to the minimum 400 kOhm K&K quotes. I happen to think it is better to error on the low side with these pickups because of the mud.

In addition, their EQ settings are almost perfectly suited to what I described above! What luck!

[BluesKing777]

Yes, I have got better at operating gadgets since I bought the Genz amp probably over 15 years ago. Probably the last time I used it live was at a friend's funeral wake 10 years ago - and I had to sit too far away from the amp when I was playing (I like it right next to me like a wedge) and couldn't hear it properly, though I had a line out to the PA and people said it sounded nice out front.....do we believe them? I have often lusted for an AER 60 but that has no mid sweep or some of the back panel options...


Now, the full ugly test of the amp!

I picked my latest acquisition up, installed the Fishman Rare Earth Blend - I can get a fairly nice sound through my mixer with this.

In the Genz - awful! Must be a mismatch of everything. No good at all. I then ran it to the Tonedexter with the sound images OFF for more controls and a buffer maybe - better, but not very nice.


BluesKing777.

[Vancebo]

That’s a lot of good info there Dave. All this pickup talk reminds me way back when hardly anybody knew about K&K on this forum. I believe it was the Taylor Guitar forum at the time. Since I am from Oregon and K&K is in a small town on the coast I actually heard about it at a local music store and a few folks mentioned it on the forum. Had a luthier install my first set in a Goodall. Had to be circa 1998 or so but I am not positive. I plugged it into either a Baggs PADI or a Raven Labs PMB 1. It was all bass and no treble. I sure didn’t understand impedance but I am sure that was the issue you mentioned. I was always cutting bass to get any treble. Later, it was a Pendulum. Same result. I really liked the 3 way pickup that they made. It had the minis, a UST and a mic. Everything was mixed with an onboard blender where you can adjust the EQ and gain for each pick up on board. It was a beast of a system and it had additional volume wheels at the sound hole. All into one mono cable. I could get that to really hum. Even then, I still couldn’t hear the low thunk of a string being plucked. I am sure back in that time I was doing something wrong. But it most likely had to do with impedance.

[martingitdave]

Vancebo

I think the K&K onboard multi source systems can sound amazing based on recordings I’ve listened too. But, I can also agree with those who might consider it just too much “stuff” inside the guitar. I’m really on be fence about this now.

To me, the allure of the K&K is the reliable strong signal you get in the passive installation. Once I load all of the associated preamps, wiring and battery in the guitar, it “seems”Ike a less attractive solution. That said, if you’re the type of player who needs an active system for gigs, it’s hard to argue with it.

I think once the preamp is chosen to be around 1 meg Ohm, it should “just work.” And, it should give a flatter response.

Cheers

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by EdEd

I have had more than one K&K install that I thought had gone wrong until I turned the amp off or unplugged the guitar. The only difference was volume... and that’s with no external boxes.



Ed

Ed, I don’t doubt your experience with passive K&K into different PA systems yielding good results with no preamp or EQ.

But, I also don’t doubt my own ears - that K&K sounds significantly better when the right electronics are applied. Without the EQ and a preamp stage, I hear mostly mud and very little highs. It still sounds better than a lot of the junk on the market, but it’s not that clear a representation of my guitar either.

My comment is not an indictment. In fact, I firmly believe that we all hear things differently.

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by BluesKing777

Yes, I have got better at operating gadgets since I bought the Genz amp probably over 15 years ago. Probably the last time I used it live was at a friend's funeral wake 10 years ago - and I had to sit too far away from the amp when I was playing (I like it right next to me like a wedge) and couldn't hear it properly, though I had a line out to the PA and people said it sounded nice out front.....do we believe them? I have often lusted for an AER 60 but that has no mid sweep or some of the back panel options...





Now, the full ugly test of the amp!



I picked my latest acquisition up, installed the Fishman Rare Earth Blend - I can get a fairly nice sound through my mixer with this.



In the Genz - awful! Must be a mismatch of everything. No good at all. I then ran it to the Tonedexter with the sound images OFF for more controls and a buffer maybe - better, but not very nice.





BluesKing777.

It can be frustrating when I consider all the gadgets, amps, PA speakers, mixers, and such that I have used over the years. The truth is that I don’t think my sound today is any “better” than it was 20 years ago, excepting the ToneDexter, which is a innovation. But, the stuff is lighter in weight for sure. And, we all seem to care about that these days.

In some ways, ignorance was bliss.

[EdEd]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

Ed, I don’t doubt your experience with passive K&K into different PA systems yielding good results with no preamp or EQ.

But, I also don’t doubt my own ears - that K&K sounds significantly better when the right electronics are applied. Without the EQ and a preamp stage, I hear mostly mud and very little highs. It still sounds better than a lot of the junk on the market, but it’s not that clear a representation of my guitar either.

My comment is not an indictment. In fact, I firmly believe that we all hear things differently.

The majority of my experiences have been with an Ultrasound AG50-DS2... my main acoustic amp, and the one I use for testing (and performing). Typically, it is set with no effects, and flat eq.

My goal is the guitar, but louder... not better. I like the way my guitars sound. That’s what I get with my setup.

Ed

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by EdEd

The majority of my experiences have been with an Ultrasound AG50-DS2... my main acoustic amp, and the one I use for testing (and performing). Typically, it is set with no effects, and flat eq.



My goal is the guitar, but louder... not better. I like the way my guitars sound. That’s what I get with my setup.



Ed

Reviewing the specs for your amp suggests that the preamp built into it matches the specs from K&K nearly perfectly. I can see why you would get those results. You essentially have a setup that would mimic a K&K => K&K pure XLR preamp => (2) 8” 2-way cabinets. It’s nearly ideally suited for that. It’s no doubt you can set it flat.

[guitaniac]

martingitdave,

Your theory of why the Pure Mini tends to be too strong in the lows and low mids seems pretty reasonable. I have to ask myself, however, why one can tape a PUTW #27 SBT in a very similar location (directly under the saddle) and get a nicely even tone with only a small mid cut - and that's with using a 1st generation Fishman Platinum Pro (10 Mohm input impedance) to preamp the PUTW SBT.

When I put a Pure Mini in the same guitar the result was much, much bassier. Using a Boss GE-7 (1 Mohm input impedance) to preamp the Pure Mini reduced the bass end somewhat, but I still had to severely cut down the lows and low mids.

Albeit, I only used a tape installation for the Pure Mini in this particular guitar (a Taylor 314ce). In my experience, the super glue gel installation is somewhat brighter (with the Pure Mini) than the tape installation. Nevertheless, the difference between the Pure Mini with tape and the PUTW #27 with tape was like night and day. If the Pure Mini's tone was overly bassy because of its listening perspective in the guitar, I have to ask myself why the PUTW SBT wasn't effected in the same way.

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

martingitdave,

Your theory of why the Pure Mini tends to be too strong in the lows and low mids seems pretty reasonable. I have to ask myself, however, why one can tape a PUTW #27 SBT in a very similar location (directly under the saddle) and get a nicely even tone with only a small mid cut - and that's with using a 1st generation Fishman Platinum Pro (10 Mohm input impedance) to preamp the PUTW SBT.

When I put a Pure Mini in the same guitar the result was much, much bassier. Using a Boss GE-7 (1 Mohm input impedance) to preamp the Pure Mini reduced the bass end somewhat, but I still had to severely cut down the lows and low mids.

Albeit, I only used a tape installation for the Pure Mini in this particular guitar (a Taylor 314ce). In my experience, the super glue gel installation is somewhat brighter (with the Pure Mini) than the tape installation. Nevertheless, the difference between the Pure Mini with tape and the PUTW #27 with tape was like night and day. If the Pure Mini's tone was overly bassy because of its listening perspective in the guitar, I have to ask myself why the PUTW SBT wasn't effected in the same way.

Good observations. I experimented with the PUTW pickup and it was extremely microphonic. There is a braided Kevlar jacket that the PUTW goes into. My theory is that many pickup that gets elevated from the bridge plate by even the slightest amount will loose bass transfer and pickup more “air” in the sound, like a mic. My suspicion is that because K&K uses a metallic disc the low frequency vibrations are attenuated at all. Couple that with the super glue and you get a very efficient transfer of low frequency vibrations with the K&K. So, I think it’s a combination of materials surrounding the piezo and the method of attachment being equally important. I was very happy with the PUTW for a while. So much so that I considered super glue. But the feedback with that pickup was too much for me and I decided against it.