Ever hear of a D-TAR "mama bear" ?

[mtmikey]

good info here (thanks gary!). ditto the rec to visit the d-tar forums. excellent crew there.

i haven't used the mama bear and, to be honest, haven't really had much interest in the whole modelling thing (i guess i just sorta like my live sound... call me crazy). but i do use both the d-tar solstice and equinox, and they're great units. i'm sure mama bear will be similarly well done. there has been a lot of low-level buzz going on and a lot of anticipation (read: impatience) about the unit, but i think rick and evan and folks at d-tar are taking the time to get it right.

i'll never say never to another magic box...

[Curly]

Originally Posted by mtmikey

there has been a lot of low-level buzz going on and a lot of anticipation (read: impatience) about the unit, but i think rick and evan and folks at d-tar are taking the time to get it right.

I consider the "impatience" mostly whining

I agree about trusting the folks at DTAR. The worst thing a company could do would be to bring something to market before it's totally ready. Unfortunately, a lot of players don't understand the manufacturer's perspective. The manufacturers have to think in terms of thousands of units, and the company's very reputation.

I'm willing to wait.

I'll see Seymour and Evan this Friday at the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad. I'll see if I can get a minute with Evan and get some info on the Mama Bear.

[guitaniac]

For the record, the guy who has been most vocally impatient (with Mama Bear's delayed release) is upset because his Aura-using duo partner is quote "smoking my guitar sound" every weekend. I can empathize with that.

If I recall correctly, this player has a Duncan MagMic-equipped Gibson and a B-Band UST-equipped Larrivee. I think that he's made the right choice to wait for Mama Bear, as frustrating as the wait may be.

I wonder if we'll ever get a report on the duo's dueling digital devices.

Gary

[rainsong]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

On the other hand, I don't foresee the Aura's "sounds like your guitar being miked" approach working terribly well with stage guitars like the RS-6. It wasn't designed to be miked, it probably wouldn't produce a very useable custom sound image, and it isn't likely to be compatable with an available generic sound image.


Gary

Yeah, I can see where "just like my guitar mic'd" would not be that attractive w/ an RS-6 or Yamaha Silent or Goden Multiac, etc.

[guitaniac]

Originally Posted by rainsong

Yeah, I can see where "just like my guitar mic'd" would not be that attractive w/ an RS-6 or Yamaha Silent or Goden Multiac, etc.

The Yamaha Silent Guitar might not be of much use at a campfire, but Rick Turner has commented that this type of stage guitar offers a good neutral platform for Mama Bear. I presume he means that it lends itself well to taking on a variety of target guitar personalities. While I never got the chance to Mama-tize a YSG, I definitely recall that my little Yamaha APX4A seemed equally at home with the 1930s Martin D-18 target guitar or the cedar-topped Taylor GA target guitar. My preference depended on whether I was going to strum or play fingerstyle.

Gary

[Rick Turner]

Because Mama Bear is not limited to trying to just make a particular guitar sound more like itself but amplified (though she can do that very well), what we have is a kind of universal shape shifter electronic device that can add the ambience of wood and air to a "neutral" string signal. The RS-6, not being troubled by interaction with the sound field around it, works really well as a digital modeling driver.

Think of Mama as a 3 dimensional EQ, able to add depth in addition to changing frequency balance. You know, if frequency based EQ alone could make an amplified acoustic sound "real" it would have been done years ago. The fact is that the 3rd dimension I speak of, time (or phase information), is what is critical in our perception of the tonal signature of an acoustic instrument. In the digital domain, we can shape the time/phase relationships of different frequencies, and hence Mama Bear and the Aura which is a credible but different approach to helping amplify acoustic guitars more realistically.

[Bevelman]

The manual is now on the site at:
http://www.d-tar.com/images/mama_bear.pdf

[Rick Turner]

Mama is officially available.

She hit the first stores late this past week.