#16
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The Bose T1 has some presets for specific guitar models ..I mix and match sometimes.. sometimes it works ok.
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#17
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Sometimes, we are just happy to get a better sound out of an undersaddle!
Years ago, I was pretty chuffed when I bought the Aura Spectrum - if you had a guitar with no matching image, just plugging the (Fishman) undersaddle pickup guitar into Aura gave a good impedance match and a better sound, well, way way way better than straight to amp quackorama Just adding 20% of a similar type of guitar's image could give you a beautiful 'recorded with mic in a studio' type of acoustic guitar sound. It may sound not one single thing like your guitar in the flesh, but a nice sound nonetheless! The most incredible Aura is the Martin loaded F1 + of the Retro series - here is the Martin blurb from about 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REhpxpufBws BluesKing777. |
#18
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Quote:
I took a look at a couple of the F1+ tutorial vids. Its pretty impressive how much control the user has over the different parameters (including compression) when in "performance" mode. In easy mode, your control over the sound is much more limited. You can't even adjust the pickup/sound image blend in easy mode. |
#19
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Those Aura F+ tutorials were interesting, although I thought the Performance mode was pretty complicated. I could imagine myself sweating that out trying to remember the commands in some difficult room in dim light. And in the end, I never thought the Aura systems delivered as well as the Tonedexter does. And of course with the Tonedexter you can make wavemaps for as many different instruments as you have, while the Aura F+ system only functions with the one guitar that has it installed.
James May has mentioned that he makes different wavemaps for potentially different room acoustics (as the Aura F+ video suggests different modeling might be used). I don’t know how you would anticipate potential problems you might run into in that case. I am always just trying to get the best sounding wavemap I can through the headsets, test it through an amplifier and then sit back to congratulate myself on my skill... So cheating by swapping wavemaps might be another way to come up with alternative acoustic treatments, I suppose, but I still don’t know how you would anticipate the problem room or speaker setup until you find yourself in that problematic room. There are just so many variables. I have just loaned my Tonedexter to a friend who is playing a show up in the big city (Burlington) with a gypsy style guitar and a small acoustic group, using on wavemaps he made in his home and I am looking forward to hearing how it goes. This is someone who has a very expensive pickup system that has never really delivered what he wants, and he is fascinated by the Tonedexter and wanted to try it out in a real life performance situation.
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2003 Martin OM-42, K&K's 1932 National Style O, K&K's 1930 National Style 1 tricone Square-neck 1951 Rickenbacker Panda lap steel 2014 Gibson Roy Smeck Stage Deluxe Ltd, Custom Shop, K&K's 1957 Kay K-27 X-braced jumbo, K&K's 1967 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Nashville 2024 Mahogany Weissenborn, Jack Stepick Ear Trumpet Labs Edwina Tonedexter |
#20
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With respect to James May's comment about using different WaveMaps for different rooms, that is very similar to something Doyle Dykes said when he was demoing the Aura-equipped Godin Multiac Duet Ambiance. He opined that different Aura sound images tend to work best in different rooms.
I'm a "whatever works best" kind of guy, and so far the WaveMap which has worked best for me has worked best in three different rooms. It also happens to be a WaveMap which I trained with a different guitar/pickup rig. I like it better than any of the WaveMaps which I've trained using the same guitar/pickup rig. Perhaps that unexpected circumstance has to do with the fact that my gigging guitar has an atypical pickup which requires an atypical training protocol, or the fact that I'm using a very cheap and atypical training mic. In any event, I'm getting good results which sound better to me than my dry pickup when optimally EQed. That's saying a lot, as the Barbera Soloist is a truly excellent pickup. I'd certainly agree that ToneDexter is a more versatile and useful tool than any of the Aura boxes. Nevertheless, one has to be impressed with the number of factors which can be controlled by two combination knob/button controls on the Aura F1+ onboard system - volume, tuning, signal phase, sound image selection, sound image/dry pickup blend, compression level, three band EQ for the sound image, three band EQ for the pickup signal, and whatever else I may have forgotten. |
#21
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If the audience accepts it, how is it cheating? Go with what works for you.
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#22
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Quote:
Ha ha ha (wild crazy laugh) - I have the Martin D18e Retro with the F1+ and it is wonderful electrically and acoustically! Plug and play! But as a true guitar madman, I have made a couple of Tonedexter wavemaps of the guitar to compare. The D18 part of the equation is a great sounding guitar in its own right and the wavemap is fantastic - I used the 'pickup only' setting and until this day I had no idea why anyone would want that setting..... But anyway, it could have a lot of situations covered with a Aura F1+ or a Tonedexter wavemap to choose from...but honestly, if you were in a hurry you would just take the Martin and plug in. Now if that is not enough for you to contemplate, I also have my Maton SRS808 with the incredible Maton AP5-Pro pickup system, all youwould really ever need live...but as I could not help myself, I made a wavemap of that guitar acoustically as well by turning the condenser mic off and just running the piezo. Sounds superb! But again, if we were in a hurry..... BluesKing777. |
#23
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Having all the electronics onboard the guitar is indeed a nice convenience. The little Cort 00 which I once owned had an onboard Aura system which had all the bells and whistles plus an adjustable gain feature to optimize the gain level according to the user's string attack. It had its own model-specific Aura sound images. To my surprise, however, I found one of the Aura Spectrum DI's OM sound images worked much better for my taste. (I apparently preferred modeling a bigger guitar to having the amplified signal sound more like that little 00 being miked.) The Spectrum DI ran through batteries like crazy, but at least you could operate it on batteries. (One of its few advantages over ToneDexter, another being the convenience for the user of not needing to create his/her own sound images.)
In any event, convenience is a priority for some people and certainly a deciding factor when all the other factors are equal. If you can get convenience and one's preferred sound, why not make that choice. |