Alternatives to plugged in acoustics

[SpruceTop]

Ground Zero: If mics were so good, why did players/companies feel an alternative was necessary to mic'ing acoustic guitars/acoustic instruments for live performances under a variety of venues? From personal experience, with mics and pickup systems, I embrace the various alternatives to mics for capturing acoustic tone for live performance, and hope technology keeps moving acoustic tone forward to more closely approach a mic's tone and even move beyond it (which in some ways it has already done so). There's a place for both mics and pickup/preamp systems.

[Robin, Wales]

Originally Posted by SpruceTop

Ground Zero:.... There's a place for both mics and pickup/preamp systems.

Of course there's a place for both. It is just that using a mic' has dropped off the radar. I saw a music industry stat from a couple of years ago that showed less than 20% of acoustic guitars sold today don't have picks up fitted (and that included nylon strung guitars in the stat).

Plugging in is today most beginner's first experience of playing amplified. Look at the number of thread's here where beginners ask about p/u systems for their first open mic'.

Look at just how much kit there is available for acoustic guitar players to buy based around pick up systems. Look at how many acoustic guitar amps only have a vocal mic' input and a 1/4" jack socket for guitar.

There will be a quite large number of acoustic guitar players who have never gigged using a mic'. The concept won't even have crossed their minds. Even though they search for the elusive p/u and outboard processor that will make their guitar sound like they are playing through a mic'.

There will be a reasonable number of amateur players, playing small venue gigs and other events, who would be better served by mic'ing their instrument rather than plugging in. But where do they go for that advice today on how to do so? Certainly not a guitar shop.

[Br1ck]

How many performances are there like Julian Lage, where people are quietly hanging on every note and the PA and sound engineers are pro?

Few. If you have never heard a Cole Clark, you should. I'd say it's plenty good for the majority of musicians. If a drummer is in the band, even the under saddle pickup might work best.

How good you can sound is up to the audience. If you are paying $90 to see someone, you are motivated to listen.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by Br1ck

How good you can sound is up to the audience.

And the audience you get depends for a large part on the repertoire you're playing...

(The few times I've had invites for concerts I couldn't have afforded going to gave me a strong conviction that over a certain ticket price the proportion of "there-to-be-seen" audience members starts increasing with ticket price ... and those are rarely the best educated in audience etiquette ...)

[PapaLobo]

Hosting an Acoustic Open Mic for a year I've run across a wide variety .
The Baggs and K&K both give good tone . I run everything through a Fender Acoustic 100 or Mesa Rosette DI'd to the board where I can further shape sound.

For the more challenging instruments I use a Boss PRO 5 band parametric.

All the musicians love the sound, many saying it's the best in town.

After 61 years, experience pays off.

As far as miking, I use an SM57 . I'm NOT a fan if they are also singing as it's much more prone to feedback . These are rookies ..so not terribly mic knowlegable.

I keep a Koa GS Mini handy for those without pickups, so far most opt for it.
On occasion, I lend one of the nice Taylors or PRS out for special artists.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Playing solo, it's usually better to either use a mic or not amplify at all. (It's amazing how well a good guitar projects.)

Playing in a band, all that matters is being heard. A simple piezo or soundhole pickup into an amp or PA will take care of that.

[TheSaint]

A wealth of experience speaks in the previous few pages.

You'll always be disappointed by chasing the sound of 'my guitar only louder' by using pick ups. It just won't happen. Once you accept that fact, things become a little bit easier.

If you're playing a concert where you are the focal point for the audience, use a mic. They will listen and you have nothing to compete with musically.

For the vast majority of us who aren't in that position, you have to find something that gives a good approximation of the sound you need. Which isn't always the sound you actually want. A subtle difference.

I solved the problem by using a guitar that gives a decent sound through my PA and has zero feedback issues.

The Yamaha SLG 200S Silent Guitar.

I gigged with it all last summer. It has on-board tuner and reverb/chorus. For smaller gigs it goes through my Bose T1 mixer which has more FX than you can shake a stick at.

For larger gigs, it goes direct to my Soundcraft 12 channel desk. Either way it sounds great. I'm really not one for using much in the way of FX on acoustic.

And it's different enough to deflect interest away from my playing ability and onto the guitar itself. I always have a group of people gathered around at the end, asking questions.

I bought a PRS Hollowbody ll Piezo last year and although it sound good (and was extremely well built) the acoustic sound didn't beat the sound of my Yamaha.

[tdrake]

Here's what I've found in my 20 year experience as a singer songwriter who likes to play with full bands, endlessly wrestling with this issue:

A) Sitting in a quiet room playing acoustically with two or three other musicians ranks up there with sex and drinking good wine as one of life's most wonderful, magical, pleasurable experiences.

B) Plugging in an acoustic guitar and a bunch of vocal mics and trying to keep up with a drummer on stage in a loud public venue ranks up there with a bad day at the office or a trip to the dentist -- it's a necessary evil worth showing up for, but man, ugh, bleah....

So I'm back on this board after an 8 year hiatus to wrestle with this question one more time, but what I gather, once again, is:

A) I can drop roughly $1000 to get a top of the line setup in one of my acoustics, and it'll sound "ok" once we really get out there in the real world, on stage....

B) Or I can gig with my Tele and even a so so amp and it'll sound great. Obviously it won't sound like an acoustic guitar, but it will be a really beautiful sound all its own.

(Edit: Option C) What I used to do: remember that no one cares what my guitar sounds like and stick a M1 in it or live with the meh K&K tones.)

So, for now, for the next gigs, at least, Imma approach it like this:

A) I love acoustic guitars, sex, and drinking fine wine.

B) But not at the office. Or on stage.

(Because clearly life isn't fair and verily it is but a veil of tears....)

As for arch tops: I chased that chimera about a decade ago and performed for awhile with a 50s Gibson arch top and Princeton -- it looked amazing; it was badass; but it didn't sound anywhere near as "acoustic" or wonderful as a Tele (or Strat or whatever) thru just about any clean Fenderish or Voxy amp.

Anyway, I'd like to think I've solved my problem with this issue, but I suspect I'll keep picking at this scab for the following decade....

[stringbound]

My compromise is a Fishman Rare Earth Mic Blend pickup. I dial in about 75% of the mic and 25% of the magnetic pickup for a stable signal. Sometimes, a mic just isn't enough. The 75/25 blend between microphone and pickup seems to be convincingly acoustic to the audience.

Before the Fishman, I had a DPA 4099 CORE condenser mic, which I would blend with the piezo in my guitar, when I needed to. I endet up blending the microphone and the pickup all of the time. Switches to the Fishman for all my guitars, after I bought an Ibanez JGM10. The guitar is gone, but now I've got the Fishman in my 914ce and C14ce. Doesn't look nice, but to me the resulting Sound and the convenience are worth it.

I play solo fingerstyle, mostly irish harp music.

[Robin, Wales]

F

Originally Posted by tdrake

Here's what I've found in my 20 year experience as a singer songwriter who likes to play with full bands, endlessly wrestling with this issue:


B) Plugging in an acoustic guitar and a bunch of vocal mics and trying to keep up with a drummer on stage in a loud public venue ranks up there with a bad day at the office or a trip to the dentist -- it's a necessary evil worth showing up for, but man, ugh, bleah....



Anyway, I'd like to think I've solved my problem with this issue, but I suspect I'll keep picking at this scab for the following decade....

Just from an amateur local barroom type gig perspective:

I like the KISS principal.

Take a scratch amateur band of local friends - in a Friday night local bar - 3 singers, two with acoustic guitars, mandolin, banjo, dobro and harmonica at various stages during the set. Then electric guitar, bass guitar and a drummer.

We could have had 3 x vocal mic's and leads to plug in the acoustic instruments everywhere!!! And a nightmare sound check. But I just put up an lcd mic' centre stage and said that the 3 of us were going to sing and play around that - the other 3 just had to come in underneath us. Simples...

No one in the bar that night was remotely concerned about or commented on the band running at a slightly lower spl than many other Friday night bookings. Folks had a fun night out.

For me the crucial aspect was that we got the balance right, not by turning things up, but by turning things down.

I don't think that you need the perfect venue or a quiet listening audience to run a very simple set up for acoustic instruments and voices mixed with electric instruments and drums. Just a bit of thought. And a willingness not to run too high a gig spl.

[tdrake]

Originally Posted by Robin, Wales

F




Take a scratch amateur band of local friends - in a Friday night local bar - 3 singers, two with acoustic guitars, mandolin, banjo, dobro and harmonica at various stages during the set. Then electric guitar, bass guitar and a drummer.

That is awesome! I'd be really, really happy pulling that off.

Watching my bluegrass friends endlessly wrestle with feedback using that setup turned me off of that approach, but clearly y'all are making it work.

And work well! Interesting...hmm....

[Robin, Wales]

Originally Posted by tdrake

That is awesome! I'd be really, really happy pulling that off.

Watching my bluegrass friends endlessly wrestle with feedback using that setup turned me off of that approach, but clearly y'all are making it work.

And work well! Interesting...hmm....

Thanks!

Here is the system with different acoustic instruments. I am surprised that more folks don't use an ldc stage mic' as an alternative to plugging in. It's not rocket science to ring out a room. And then you can just pick up whatever instrument you want and play. Balance is all done by moving around within the mic' field. And I think that it is much easier to sing and play together than it is when you flat line front of stage using separate vocal mic's.

[pcs264]

Here's a basic fact that I learned in a discussion with Jorma Kaukonen and others at Fur Peace Ranch: Playing an unamplified acoustic guitar is one thing, with pros and cons depending on the situation and your needs. Playing a mic'd acoustic guitar is another thing, with different pros and cons.

But as soon as you attach a pickup to a guitar - sound hole or under-saddle or transducer or a combination of these, you are now playing an electric guitar. It may very well be one that looks acoustic and may even sound very acoustic (or not) but it is an electric guitar. And there is now a different set of pros and cons.

Recognizing this fact and accommodating that reality may be uncomfortable at first, but it will remove a lot of unrealistic expectations and the accompanying anxiety. All three of these scenarios have their places, and they are not the same as each other.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by pcs264

But as soon as you attach a pickup to a guitar - sound hole or under-saddle or transducer or a combination of these, you are now playing an electric guitar

I disagree, or we need yet another term for what we now understand as an electric guitar. Currently that's commonly understood as a guitar-like instrument where string vibrations are detected by a magnetic pickup that translates the vibrations of individual strings to as many currents, which usually get summed.

If we disregard magnetic pickups that you can indeed add to an acoustic guitar, all other forms transduce either actual sound(waves), soundboard vibrations or vibrations at the transfer point between saddle and soundboard. Or a combination thereof. Those transduced signals should be in a much closer relationship to the instrument's real (acoustic/unplugged) voice than the signal from a magnetic PU can ever hope to be (unless that's a PU picking up the vibration of a [very thin] steel top 8) ).

It's not clear why you left out microphone-based pickups from your list - maybe because doing that would imply that in your opinion, putting a singer in front of a microphone turns the person into an electric soprano/alto/.../bass?

[pcs264]

I intentionally left microphones off my list because they aren't pickups. Pickups of the various types turn wood and or saddle vibrations into electrical impulses or have a magnetic field disturbed by strings and turn that to electrical impulses. Microphones turn actual sound waves in the air (produced by a guitar, singer, horn, drum, etc.) into electrical impulses. A system that includes both a pickup of some type and a microphone is a hybrid, and they can work really well - and the part that's the pickup is still a form of electric guitar.

The distinctions among these in the practical world may be subtle, but they matter, and much of what we all angst over in the guitar world is subtle distinctions. And I did note that parsing out our thinking this specifically can be uncomfortable!