Mic clipping problem

[irish_admiral]

Hi guys

I was on a while ago about trying to mix my K&K PWM and internal mic nicely. I was listening to the sound the other day through my closed back headphones and noticed that the internal mic seems to be distorting when I strum hard. I've lost the gain on it almost entirely, rolled the treble and bass right back and the desk isn't clipping.

Any ideas for a solution?

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by irish_admiral

...I was on a while ago about trying to mix my K&K PWM and internal mic nicely. I was listening to the sound the other day through my closed back headphones and noticed that the internal mic seems to be distorting when I strum hard. I've lost the gain on it almost entirely, rolled the treble and bass right back and the desk isn't clipping.

Hi IA...
What are you playing it through (and monitoring the headphones through)?

Is this for live play or recording?

[irish_admiral]

Hey...

Guitar into Trinity into little Behringer mixer - monitoring using the headphone monitor out.

Pickup is fine - no clipping there...

[irish_admiral]

Sorry I should add that whilst I do some (basic) recording, this is for live play.

It's a little irritating as it mushes up the sound a touch.

[zb0430]

You could be clipping at a number of stages in the signal chain, via the consoles headphone output, or something else... Any way to check it on another setup as well, to determine if it's isolated to your signal chain, or if it's actually the pickup?

[irish_admiral]

Good point... I completely forgot to do that. I'll plug it into an amp and see if that works...

[wierdOne]

actually... it sounds like you're not using the microphone at all.. if you're plugging directing into your board, then you're only using the transducers glued to the the underbelly of the guitar...

I have the same system, and am using my guitar plugged directly into a bose system..... If you're not using a preamp with a stereo cable, then you're not using the microphone at all...

it's rather ironic, because I am having that same problem right now...

when I play through the bose.... when i play some chords... hard or soft.. the output signal is distorted.

I recently acquired a SansAmp Acoustic preamp pedal that I'm going to try out on my gig this week... hopefully this will allow me to shape my eq and solve the problem..

I received this email from Dieter at K&K this morning.:

The K&K pickups are quite strong in the low end and some amp/PA systems may
not like that, especially digital ones like the Bose. They do not tolerate
any overload situation.
The preamp is a good idea, I would just recommend to go with K&K model PURE
XLR preamp. This one has a phase switch, which is very important to match
the pickup to different amp's/Pa's and it is set to match the K&K pickups.

http://www.kksound.com/purexlrpreamp.html

At any rate, you have to make sure not to overload the Bose inputs at all,
they very unforgiving. Any overload burst sounds digitally terrible.


Thank you and best regards
Dieter
K&K Sound Systems Inc.

[wierdOne]

actually... i just reread your post... I now assume that you're plugged into the K&k Trinity preamp?

if so... then... my problem isn't what you're having.

[kramster]

Also switch inputs on the mixer and see if it makes a difference, a channel might have some dirt in there and watch the input gain...

[irish_admiral]

I think it must be the headphones clipping - tried recording onto my PC and it sounded fine.

Hmm.

Playing at church again on Thursday, so i'll try to isolate it then.