Rethinking setup after K&K install - EQ pedal options???

[Jack Orion]

Originally Posted by Dakedi

Well here is a bit more food for thought to be dismissed if needed

First off, congratulations on some very fine work. I enjoyed watching some of the stuff on your site.

No doubt you have already learnt ... always beware of overly enthusiatic recommendations ... try before you buy if possible. You tried the GE7 and know what it does to your sound ... however, there are so many recommendations for the GE7 saying it is low noise and doesn't colour your sound and is the best EQ out there

With that said ... here are a few more things to consider ...

My main gigging guitar also has an Anthem SL and I run it through either a Baggs Venue or Radial PZ-Pre straight into AER C60. I use the XLR out from that for any desk.

This setup never worked for me with K&K so I got rid of it in all my guitars. It doesn't work for me with the Baggs Lyric pickup either ... which also needs massive cuts to some nasty honky frequencies.

I have 2 solutions that do work with this difficult pickup.

Carl Martin ParaEQ is a simple to use parametric designed for acoustic instruments. I like it because it is super fast to dial in (not usual for a parametric EQ). It has fixed Q but the settings are the most usable I've found. It also has an XLR out you can send to a desk.

AER Dual Para EQ is a fully parametric dual band EQ. It is super powerful at dialing out nastiness ... it's a bit slower to dial in than the Carl Martin because of the extra Q controls. It's the usual AER quality.

I'd compare these to the Empress ParaEQ

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the compliments on my work! The dual Para looks interesting and I'm sure it'd sound great being AER, but I'm not sure it would work on a pedalboard due to the 24v and lack of footswitch.

Originally Posted by varmonter

At one point i was able to purchase 2 speck asc
eqs, for around 300 each used. These are 1/2 rack
mount units and probably the nicest eqs i've ever
used. I used one for my mandolin and one for
my guitar. these are recording studio eqs.
But they were in my rack for years and seem
quite road worthy. But i eventually went with a felix And
a pedal board so the rack stays home now .
The kk is a great pickup but definitely requires
Outboard eq of some type.
I tried the tonedexter as well and like stated a few posts
up found the sound too overprocessed and sterile.
But it gets a lot of love here.
Forums are a great place to ask questions and get opinions.
They contain a very diverse group of well minded people of
all levels of experience. I have found over the years that what
one persons set of experiences may not be what others sets
have been. An example would be someone who has plugged
their guitar directly into a board who suddenly discovers a DI Box
and will rave about brand x di box till the cows come home.
This worked for them but may not be where you are at currently .
I guess i am just cautioning about using a grain of salt.

Some good points here - it's great to get advice but also you have to remember what it is you're looking to achieve.

With that in mind I think I'm going to start by getting hold of a ParaEQ - my current DI/Preamp allows me to get 80% there with the K&K, and I think the ability to do a sharp cut at 200, a wider one at 400, and maybe something higher up (there's a bit of 'clack' with the K&K I find) and then bring the level back up all with one stomp might be all I need.

It might not be, but this is the simplest step at the moment and it feels like a step I can take simply and easily, rather than a full rethink of everything...

[varmonter]

i looked at a pic of the dual para by aer.
I didn't see an xlr out in the pics?? Does it have one?
Kk pups like an input impedance of 1 mgohm.
I would look at that as well.

[Jack Orion]

Well I found a sh ParaEQ on Reverb for £130 (half the new price in the UK). It's not the latest version but, as far as I can tell, the differences are how the power supply works, a lower input impedance (500K rather than 1M), no buffer, and you can't use the boost on its own.

I know there is the impedance mismatch there with a K&K but I'm running a TU3 first in line anyway.

First impressions are it's doing exactly what I need it to do - going through my Orchid and then into my AER (set flat for this purpose), I'm using the Empress for a narrow Q cut at 200, a wider cut at around 800, and for a slightly narrower cut at about 1.5 and it sounds way better than with just the Orchid EQ!

There is a little bit of added noise as I'm using the boost to bring the volume back up after the cuts, but I don't think it would be enough to notice in a live situation (and I have noticed that my Orchid can be noisy through the AER, I wonder if the AER really does provide a full 48v phantom...)

I'm pretty happy with this setup in principle, it means I can leave my Anthem settings on the Orchid and then just kick in the EQ for the K&K guitar - in fact I'd almost go as far to say that the extra bit of EQ has improved the K&K so much that I 'might' prefer it to the Anthem now, but we shall see...

The only annoying thing is that most of my gigs over the next couple of weeks are ones where I wouldn't be taking my Collings anyway so I won't get a chance to test it in a live situation until the end of next month.

I'm also going to spend some time with it today running my two Anthem equipped guitars though and seeing if the Empress helps me dial out a bit of the brightness in my Anthem-equipped Collings - fingers crossed it will and it will end up being a useful bit of kit!

[Jack Orion]

Here's an update after a couple of gigs with this setup...

So I actually picked up a new ParaEq as well as I thought I might forego using my Orchid Preamp and just buy a simple DI and then use the two ParaEQs for my EQ needs.

Took this setup to a gig last weekend and it didn't turn out too well - unfortunately I was dealing with a very inexperienced sound person and only had a 15 minute changeover period.

My Collings with the K&K was putting out a tonne of low end that was distorting the PA - I think it could have been dealt with by engaging a HPF on the desk and reducing a bit of bass in the speakers themselves (afterwards I saw that the active speakers had a control for 80hz which was boosted about 10dB) but the sound person didn't seem to know what I was talking about and it was starting to go on a little so I ended up just using my Anthem equipped Martin for the gig.

After the show (I was the closing act in a festival tent) I had some time to play the Collings through the PA on my own and, as suspected, engaging the HPF, trimming the bass back on the speakers themselves, and then taking a little more bass out on the channel strip solved all of the issues and took me about 20 seconds to do... oh well!

After this gig I decided that I needed a HPF in the chain somewhere and, after some testing at home, decided that the Orchid Preamp must have one built in as it was taking a lot of low end out, so I've gone back to the single ParaEQ into the Orchid - I'll set the Orchid for a good tone with the Anthem and then adjust the Para for the K&K.

Anyway I then had a restaurent gig yesterday where I was using my AER for my onstage sound and then sending a DI out to the house system, which is essentially a HiFi with multiple speakers around the venue.

I can't use my Orchid with my AER as I need the XLR channel for vocals, but I set up the AER for a good sound with the Anthem and then used the Para to tweak the K&K.

This seemed to work pretty well but I was getting some low-end thump coming through the house system that wasn't coming out of my AER (I assume it was something that the smaller speaker in the AER was cutting out but the DI was still sending to the house).

It sounded to me as if if was my fingers and thumb pick hitting the strings that was causing the 'thump' as it was rhythmical but I managed to dial it out with the Para but it left me with quite a thin low end.

It was okay in the end as I bought the low end back up a tad to a point with it was fine, but there was still this hint of thump going on

I had a look at my K&K install this morning and, for some reason, the tech has aligned both outside sensors with the E strings rather than just the high E and B

IMG_7383 by Ben Morgan-Brown, on Flickr

The string balance is fine but I wonder if this is what's giving me that extra 'thump'?

Anyway, I'm hoping I can find where it is (it seemed that a cut at 100hz was helping yesterday) and dial it out with the Para but then that doesn't leave me the option of notching out the 200hz area which seems to be troublesome too.

I'll admit I'm starting to think about the Tonedexter and Grace options...

[martingitdave]

Jack,

I read through most of this thread. What you are experiencing with your K&K is what most of us experience with the K&K. I have a few guitars with the same thru saddle setup. The K&K IS the best option for these guitars because of the saddle design. What's great about the K&K is the simplicity and low impact on the guitar. What's bad about the K&K is a potential for a muted high frequency response because it gets overwhelmed by all of the reflections from the back of the guitar, like a microphone. As an aside, the installation of your K&K looks good. For people who amplify at low volume (church, folk clubs, etc.), the K&K is a fantastic option because it sounds really nice at moderate volume. When you crank a K&K up, it can be a challenge that requires a good bit of EQ.

On to your dilemma...

You say you are not interested in ToneDexter. But, I would argue that you are being a bit shortsighted by not considering the option. If you put this on the pedal board you can bypass it for the Anthem equipped guitars, or train it with the TruMic rolled off. At present time, there is no better preamp tool on the market to clean up the K&K than the ToneDexter. I've tried them all. You can get close with a 4 band parametric EQ. But, that won't restore the high end. Or, you can get a rack of processors and a microphone to try and do the same thing. Instead of thinking of the ToneDexter as an enigma, just think of it as a 2,000 band EQ pedal that auto configures itself to sound like your favorite condenser mic - in 2 minutes. I bought mine from ShoreLine Music. They have a 10% AGF discount, and a no-hassle return policy.

[Jack Orion]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

Jack,

I read through most of this thread. What you are experiencing with your K&K is what most of us experience with the K&K. I have a few guitars with the same thru saddle setup. The K&K IS the best option for these guitars because of the saddle design. What's great about the K&K is the simplicity and low impact on the guitar. What's bad about the K&K is a potential for a muted high frequency response because it gets overwhelmed by all of the reflections from the back of the guitar, like a microphone. As an aside, the installation of your K&K looks good. For people who amplify at low volume (church, folk clubs, etc.), the K&K is a fantastic option because it sounds really nice at moderate volume. When you crank a K&K up, it can be a challenge that requires a good bit of EQ.

On to your dilemma...

You say you are not interested in ToneDexter. But, I would argue that you are being a bit shortsighted by not considering the option. If you put this on the pedal board you can bypass it for the Anthem equipped guitars, or train it with the TruMic rolled off. At present time, there is no better preamp tool on the market to clean up the K&K than the ToneDexter. I've tried them all. You can get close with a 4 band parametric EQ. But, that won't restore the high end. Or, you can get a rack of processors and a microphone to try and do the same thing. Instead of thinking of the ToneDexter as an enigma, just think of it as a 2,000 band EQ pedal that auto configures itself to sound like your favorite condenser mic - in 2 minutes. I bought mine from ShoreLine Music. They have a 10% AGF discount, and a no-hassle return policy.

Thanks for the reply - I haven't 100% written off the Tonedexter, and I am warming to the idea of it but I know that I'm a fiddler, and I often get caught in the wormhole of 'does it sound a bit better like this or like that?'.

This was what turned me on to the acoustic guitar in the first place - I got fed up of fiddling with electric guitars and never quite getting it right ('does this overdrive pedal sound better than this one?' etc etc) and why I like the Anthem in my Martin so much - it's basically plug and play.

I worry with the Tonedexter that I'd get caught up in the 'what if?' scenarios - ie. 'hmm, is that slight mid honkiness because of the Rode mic I used?' 'what if i move the mic 2cm does it sound better?' etc etc.

The Anthem in my Martin is the SL which won't work with the Tonedexter but I'm happy with the tone of that guitar as is so just bypassing the wavemaps would work in theory.

Unfortunately the shoreline music option isn't open to me as I'm in the UK - there is a dealer here and I might take a punt on one at some point as it does seem that I'm being pointed in that direction a LOT!

There is a UK dealer selling for £449 so I might see what their return policy is like and order one to try.

What I have discovered this morning is that most of the troublesome frequencies I'm hearing in the K&K are related - essentially it seems to be all around the F-G# are, so 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200hz - I've just both my ParaEQs up to give me narrow but hefty (-15db) cuts at these frequencies and the sound is dramatically improved running into both my AER guitar channel and my Orchid Preamp.

To be fair I do need to add a bit of treble back in and still have a general light mid cut (plus I think a little bass boost but that's hard to tell at home) but that tends to be my default setting for acoustic anyway, so I'm guessing cutting all of those frequencies is bringing the K&K back to normal.

[martingitdave]

Originally Posted by Jack Orion

Thanks for the reply - I haven't 100% written off the Tonedexter, and I am warming to the idea of it but I know that I'm a fiddler, and I often get caught in the wormhole of 'does it sound a bit better like this or like that?'.



This was what turned me on to the acoustic guitar in the first place - I got fed up of fiddling with electric guitars and never quite getting it right ('does this overdrive pedal sound better than this one?' etc etc) and why I like the Anthem in my Martin so much - it's basically plug and play.



I worry with the Tonedexter that I'd get caught up in the 'what if?' scenarios - ie. 'hmm, is that slight mid honkiness because of the Rode mic I used?' 'what if i move the mic 2cm does it sound better?' etc etc.



The Anthem in my Martin is the SL which won't work with the Tonedexter but I'm happy with the tone of that guitar as is so just bypassing the wavemaps would work in theory.



Unfortunately the shoreline music option isn't open to me as I'm in the UK - there is a dealer here and I might take a punt on one at some point as it does seem that I'm being pointed in that direction a LOT!



There is a UK dealer selling for £449 so I might see what their return policy is like and order one to try.



What I have discovered this morning is that most of the troublesome frequencies I'm hearing in the K&K are related - essentially it seems to be all around the F-G# are, so 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200hz - I've just both my ParaEQs up to give me narrow but hefty (-15db) cuts at these frequencies and the sound is dramatically improved running into both my AER guitar channel and my Orchid Preamp.



To be fair I do need to add a bit of treble back in and still have a general light mid cut (plus I think a little bass boost but that's hard to tell at home) but that tends to be my default setting for acoustic anyway, so I'm guessing cutting all of those frequencies is bringing the K&K back to normal.

Your manual processing seems about right based on my experience. But I think the time spent doing that is more consuming than training the ToneDexter a few times. With the K&K, playing at loud volumes, it’s the most effective tool for an individual performer.

[Jack Orion]

Originally Posted by martingitdave

Your manual processing seems about right based on my experience. But I think the time spent doing that is more consuming than training the ToneDexter a few times. With the K&K, playing at loud volumes, it’s the most effective tool for an individual performer.

It's true it's taken me a few weeks of trial and error to find these EQ settings and the price of buying two ParaEqs has cost me almost as much as the Tonedexter (although I did trade some unused electric gear towards one of them).

I have another gig this evening where I'll be using my AER and my pedalboard which now has the two ParaEqs on it setup to cut the frequencies above... I have a few important gigs coming up where I think I'd be reluctant to go with an untried preamp combination (I may in fact leave the Collings with the K&K in it at home for those gigs and take my other Collings which has an Anthem SL in it as my second guitar) but I might order a Tonedexter once those gigs are out of the way and I have a bit of time to work with it.

I actually do some work for a review website in the UK and have contacted Audiosprockets about getting a Tonedexter in fro review so who knows, I might get the chance to try it our anyway!

[gfirob]

+1 for the Tonedexter. If you could get your hands on one to test and massage the setup to your own liking, I think this would probably be your best route, IMHO.

[buzzardwhiskey]

I had been using a Tonedexter alone but didn't like the highs when the volume climbed up, and the treble knob is too coarse. Now I'm trying an LR Baggs Align EQ pedal hung on the Tonedexter's Effects Loop.

The whole setup fits on my pedalboard. The Baggs unit has six bands of EQ, a notch knob, a three-setting HPF, and a phase switch. It's super quiet. With everything at noon I can't tell that the unit is on. I'll report on it after a few more gigs.

[Jack Orion]

Originally Posted by buzzardwhiskey

I had been using a Tonedexter alone but didn't like the highs when the volume climbed up, and the treble knob is too coarse. Now I'm trying an LR Baggs Align EQ pedal hung on the Tonedexter's Effects Loop.

The whole setup fits on my pedalboard. The Baggs unit has six bands of EQ, a notch knob, a three-setting HPF, and a phase switch. It's super quiet. With everything at noon I can't tell that the unit is on. I'll report on it after a few more gigs.

I just recorded a review of the LR Baggs Align series and I was impressed with the EQ pedal - packs a lot into a small package!

[stevecuss]

I read your initial problem and most of the replies.

If I had to summarize, I think you are asking, 'how can my new Collings produce a 'plug and play' decent tone like the Anthem does?'

It seems to me that you want to be able to send a mostly flat EQ response tone from your guitar so a soundman doesn't mess it up/have to adjust much at the board.

Is that right?

If so, I suggest you remove the K&K and replace it with a Trance Audio Mono system.

Trance is SBT technology like the K&K, but the tone it produces is much higher quality and the eq response from the Trance is flatter. It also uses double sided tape instead of glue, so it is less invasive in your guitar. Trance is basically a high fidelity K&K without glue. It is one of the few pickups that I have used that require little to no EQ at the board.

worth a look in your ongoing quest. Not a cheap pickup, but then that lovely Collings is worth it.

[Jack Orion]

Originally Posted by stevecuss

I read your initial problem and most of the replies.

If I had to summarize, I think you are asking, 'how can my new Collings produce a 'plug and play' decent tone like the Anthem does?'

It seems to me that you want to be able to send a mostly flat EQ response tone from your guitar so a soundman doesn't mess it up/have to adjust much at the board.

Is that right?

If so, I suggest you remove the K&K and replace it with a Trance Audio Mono system.

Trance is SBT technology like the K&K, but the tone it produces is much higher quality and the eq response from the Trance is flatter. It also uses double sided tape instead of glue, so it is less invasive in your guitar. Trance is basically a high fidelity K&K without glue. It is one of the few pickups that I have used that require little to no EQ at the board.

worth a look in your ongoing quest. Not a cheap pickup, but then that lovely Collings is worth it.

Thanks but I'm not sure I'm ready to rip the K&K out just yet - I'm not saying it'll never happen but, for the moment, I'm attempting to continue with the tools already at my disposal in search of a better sound.

I had a pub gig on Friday night which turned out to be a bit of a challenging affair as the entire pub had been booked out for a 50th birthday party which was quite noisy and probably not all that interested in a bit of chilled out folk! Thankfully I got away with just playing everything faster and with longer intros, outros and instrumentals but it did mean that my AER was pretty cranked by the second set (channel volumes at 1/2 way each and volume at nearly 3/4).

I started out with my K&K equipped Collings, using my ParaEQs to do -15db cuts at 50 (where I found a lot of handling noise was occurring), 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200 and then taking some mids out with the AER preamp and adding back a little treble, and bringing down the bass a tad just so it wasn't lumpy. I found cutting at 50 tamed most of the thump but didn't kill the bass like cutting at 100 did.

It sounded pretty good I think - quite 'fat' due to the volume of the AER and the compression that it tends to add at volume, but it wasn't muddy and I could still play with some dynamics.

I started the set with the Collings/K&K guitar tuned for standard and my Martin/Anthem in DADGAD - when it came to swap to the Martin I just turned off the EQ pedals and adjusted my AER for my usual Anthem settings...

It sounded SOOOOOO thin! It was really weird like 'ouch, where did the tone go?!?' - I've never experienced this with my Martin before and I wonder if it was because my ears had got used to the 'fat' sound of the K&K but it just did not sound good, very scratchy on the top end (and normally I wouldn't say that at all about that guitar).

So I ended up just playing the rest of the night with the Collings/K&K combo and retuning for songs rather than swapping out guitars - even in Open C the Collings didn't feedback once and the low end stayed powerful but contained - I probably could've bought it down a little bit more, but I felt I needed a bit of that power to make the songs feel more driven than they actually were.

So all in all and interesting night and one which has added to my differing experiences of gigging guitars with very different sounding pickups. I also took along my other Collings which has an Anthem in it as well but I abandoned that during soundcheck as it just sounded really bad, again something I've not experienced with that guitar before - admittedly the Anthem in that guitar has always been a bit bass light and a bit shrill at times, but I took that guitar for the C tunings and, even though it sounds fine in those tuning unplugged (despite it's short scale) I plugged it in and the bass strings just sounded like rubber bands. I think I'm going to remove the Anthem in that guitar and add a K&K and see how that works.

There were a few times where there was still a few 'honky' frequencies in the Collings/K&K tone - I think these were due to capo'ing different positions and having different open strings ringing out due to the volume I was playing at (my AER was on a chair in front of me so there wasn't a lot of distance between it and the guitar) plus I was stood in a little alcove so there was a lot of sound bouncing around me (at one point I was sure that the chorus had come on on the AER but I realised it was because I was moving around as I was playing and hearing the sound swirling about!)

I have a, hopefully, nice listening audience gig at the weekend and then a little outdoor mini festival set on saturday so I shall see how the K&K/ParaEQ/Orchid DI combo works in those situations...

I'm sorry if these posts are a bit repetitive and long and boring - hopefully there's some info in them that might be of use for other gigging players, but it's also good for me to put my thoughts out there as if I talk to my girlfriend about it she just glazes over!!!

[Doug Young]

A few comments on various things I noticed scattered among posts above:

Once you've installed a K&K, it's nearly impossible to install a Trance - the Trance doesn't bond well with the bridge plate after it's had superglue applied. That has been my experience, and Gary Hull and Trance confirms that and says the glue soaks in too far to make it practical to sand down the bridge plate enough to make it work. Maury of Maury's Music, who posts here, however, has reported he did it successfully. In any case, it's non-trivial at best to remove a K&K and replace it with a Trance.

You mentioned a low end thump when your fingers hit the strings. This is par for the course with K&Ks, and really any SBT (Trance, Dazzo, etc), tho K&Ks seem to thump louder than the others. You can clean that up with a high pass filter. The one on the Grace Felix is especially effective, but it sounds like you also have one one something in your chain. ToneDexter may help with this, tho I don't think it will totally remove it. Some USTs exhibit this behavior, too.

You mentioned having a reverb with 500K impedance in the effects loop (?). All that matters for impedance with a passive pickup is the 1st stage, what the pickup sees. There could be impedance issues in other parts of a chain, but that would involve whatever 2 pieces of gear are plugged in to each other, it's not that you need high impedance all the way thru the chain for the pickup. In any case, 500K is probably not an issue with the K&K, even if you plugged directly into that unit, you *might* get a smidgen less bass response, probably so little a difference that you couldn't hear it, and you could certainly make it up with the bass control if needed.

[Jack Orion]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

A few comments on various things I noticed scattered among posts above:

Once you've installed a K&K, it's nearly impossible to install a Trance - the Trance doesn't bond well with the bridge plate after it's had superglue applied. That has been my experience, and Gary Hull and Trance confirms that and says the glue soaks in too far to make it practical to sand down the bridge plate enough to make it work. Maury of Maury's Music, who posts here, however, has reported he did it successfully. In any case, it's non-trivial at best to remove a K&K and replace it with a Trance.

You mentioned a low end thump when your fingers hit the strings. This is par for the course with K&Ks, and really any SBT (Trance, Dazzo, etc), tho K&Ks seem to thump louder than the others. You can clean that up with a high pass filter. The one on the Grace Felix is especially effective, but it sounds like you also have one one something in your chain. ToneDexter may help with this, tho I don't think it will totally remove it. Some USTs exhibit this behavior, too.

You mentioned having a reverb with 500K impedance in the effects loop (?). All that matters for impedance with a passive pickup is the 1st stage, what the pickup sees. There could be impedance issues in other parts of a chain, but that would involve whatever 2 pieces of gear are plugged in to each other, it's not that you need high impedance all the way thru the chain for the pickup. In any case, 500K is probably not an issue with the K&K, even if you plugged directly into that unit, you *might* get a smidgen less bass response, probably so little a difference that you couldn't hear it, and you could certainly make it up with the bass control if needed.

Thanks Doug - I'm now running my ParaEQ v7 first in line which has a 1M input - I went back and forth between having it and my TU3 first in line and I think there was a small difference in clarity but who knows if it was in my mind when I knew the impedance was matched?!?

I think my Orchid Preamp has a preset HPF built in judging by the recordings I've made.

Cutting out the offensive frequencies (200, 400, 800 & 1600 mainly) drastically improved the tone at my last gig and then gives me something that the more general EQ built into my AER or Orchid can deal with but those surgical cuts seem pretty essential to me...

It's a constant battle between simplicity and good tone I find - but I'm hoping this double ParaEQ combo will be relatively 'set & go' now I've found the really bad frequencies...