Tonedexter in the field

[BluesKing777]

Originally Posted by andydepressant

While I can still hear the famous piezo quack I TOTALLY CAN hear the airy string attack I'm looking for.

I had crazily considered getting the guy doing mine to replace the piezo on a Cole Clark three way and try to wire the Ultra Tonic in its place.

I definitely think down the track a sound hole mic would do something for me.

In other news I finally found my headphone adapter and listened to what was actually coming out of the ToneDexter and it's pretty clear now how big a problem the powered monitors at the rehearsal space were and even the PA. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I had a thought....maybe the Seymour Duncan Mag Mic is worth a try. It is the only one I haven’t bought yet, I think! Quite hard to find locally. But a couple of youtube clips had that mic ‘air’. (The only thing that has stopped me from buying, apart from money, is the battery situation. I would never permanently install a mag, and I am a bit confused with their alternative wiring and soldering instructions to change to the watch batteries instead of 9V.....) I have some mags with mics, but they don’t have adjustable pole pieces like the Mag Mic and the high strings are way too loud.


BluesKing777.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by BluesKing777

I had a thought....maybe the Seymour Duncan Mag Mic is worth a try. It is the only one I haven’t bought yet, I think! Quite hard to find locally. But a couple of youtube clips had that mic ‘air’. (The only thing that has stopped me from buying, apart from money, is the battery situation. I would never permanently install a mag, and I am a bit confused with their alternative wiring and soldering instructions to change to the watch batteries instead of 9V.....) I have some mags with mics, but they don’t have adjustable pole pieces like the Mag Mic and the high strings are way too loud.


BluesKing777.

The MagMic is a very nice magnetic pickup, possibly one of the best sounding out there. The mic is pretty bright and thin, and a little goes a long way, but it can certainly help. I have set up several with the attached battery, it's pretty easy. The Duncan instructions leave a lot to be desired, they even specify the wrong battery type for this! If you try it, I'm glad to help.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by andydepressant

In other news I finally found my headphone adapter and listened to what was actually coming out of the ToneDexter and it's pretty clear now how big a problem the powered monitors at the rehearsal space were and even the PA. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So do you mean that your ToneDexter sound was good when you listened to the sound thru headphones?

This is one of the big "secrets" of amplification. It always seems like everyone wants to talk about pickups, but the entire chain matters, and the sound system is at least equally important. I've heard lots of pickups sound really good thru great PA systems (i.e. usually too expensive for individuals to own) and not so good the bad PAs. Transducers are generally the weak link in any sound system, and the first 1 is the pickup (converts your guitar into electricity) and the 2nd is the speakers (converts electricity back into sound).

[BluesKing777]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

The MagMic is a very nice magnetic pickup, possibly one of the best sounding out there. The mic is pretty bright and thin, and a little goes a long way, but it can certainly help. I have set up several with the attached battery, it's pretty easy. The Duncan instructions leave a lot to be desired, they even specify the wrong battery type for this! If you try it, I'm glad to help.

Thanks Doug!,

Ordered the Mag Mic about 2 hours ago!

I will ask my luthier to get his soldering iron out again. When I bought my Sunrise with just the installation kit, I asked him to solder a guitar plug on the bare wire on the pickup for me. Not only did he do a pro job of that, but he also heat shrunk a rubber protection cover over the join and wires to hold it nicely and stop the metal plug scratching my guitars! I didn’t have the heart to tell him the Sunrise didn’t fit in the custom guitar he made me a few years ago.....it is an eighth too big to fit no matter how I tortured it.....

After ordering the Seymour Duncan MM, I dragged out my Schertler Mag + Mic and played around with various settings and also tried it through my Sunrise buffer, no good - it is best plugged direct to my mixer really. It is a good pickup but has no adjustable pole pieces and the bass string on my subject of the moment, Waterloo WL-14X, was a bit quiet. Annoyed, I ran a lead to the K&K that is installed in the guitar to the Tonedexter on BYPASS and ran 2 inputs at once in my little A&H mixer...probably 75% K&K with 25% Schertler with mic on full. Workable, very workable....but I didn’t really like the bass sound. I recorded it but nobody will ever hear that one.


BluesKing777.

[andydepressant]

Originally Posted by BluesKing777

I had a thought....maybe the Seymour Duncan Mag Mic is worth a try. It is the only one I haven’t bought yet, I think! Quite hard to find locally. But a couple of youtube clips had that mic ‘air’. (The only thing that has stopped me from buying, apart from money, is the battery situation. I would never permanently install a mag, and I am a bit confused with their alternative wiring and soldering instructions to change to the watch batteries instead of 9V.....) I have some mags with mics, but they don’t have adjustable pole pieces like the Mag Mic and the high strings are way too loud.


BluesKing777.

This was exactly what I was thinking. But the price is too much for the foreseeable future.

[andydepressant]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

So do you mean that your ToneDexter sound was good when you listened to the sound thru headphones?

This is one of the big "secrets" of amplification. It always seems like everyone wants to talk about pickups, but the entire chain matters, and the sound system is at least equally important. I've heard lots of pickups sound really good thru great PA systems (i.e. usually too expensive for individuals to own) and not so good the bad PAs. Transducers are generally the weak link in any sound system, and the first 1 is the pickup (converts your guitar into electricity) and the 2nd is the speakers (converts electricity back into sound).

Yep. Close to night and day though the "fakeness" of the sound was still evident. But of course it's the least fake sounding. I just haven't played acoustic amplified in a couple of years so it's a fresh shock.

[andydepressant]

Originally Posted by BluesKing777

Thanks, I am glad I was on your wavelength a bit. The mic gives some definition, realism and a playability. The beauty of the Maton system is that is all self contained and you can plug straight in to a PA, but the mic needs the famous soundhole plug or it is disaster! So a preamp with EQ, volume knob, DI, comp and notch is handy. I cut the bass, sweep the mids, cut the treble and cut the “brilliance” to how I like it.

Some people add mics and run dual channels like Doug above, for even more flexibility.

Another thing to consider - A friend likes his Anthem very much but cuts the mic side live to squelch feedback and a normal soundhole plug won’t fit because of the Anthem controls perched on the soundhole. That is a problem with most mics, I suppose.


BluesKing777.

This is the monster dual system I've been dreaming about:

James May creates a new "Strum Jockey" dual preamp version of the ToneDexter for the ham fisted strummers amongst us. He also brings out a sound hole mic to match that is less offensively modern looking than the Seymour Duncan MagMic.

How does it work? Being the genius he is with EQ he does away with the stupid redundancy of blending dual sources only by volume. Instead he uses complimentary frequency taking the mids and bass from the SBT and a reverse notch of the trebles from the sound hole to pick up authentic string strike. I know the Anthem and Cole Clark kinda do something similar but the above seems a more logical and elegant way to represent the whole guitar sound.

He also puts a tube in the preamp just because tube.

Please universe!?

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by andydepressant

This was exactly what I was thinking. But the price is too much for the foreseeable future.

Just to be clear, the MagMic is very nice as a *magnetic* pickup. It sounds fat and full, and electric - not much getting around that. So if you're looking for a natural sound, the MagMic doesn't do that, really. The mic adds some air and highs, but the electric quality is inescapable.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by andydepressant

He also brings out a sound hole mic to match that is less offensively modern looking than the Seymour Duncan MagMic.

Hmm, I wouldn't call the MagMic a soundhole mic, it's a magnetic soundhole pickup, similar to the Sunrise, etc, but with a small mic in the bottom.

When I add a mic, to a guitar you can barely see it, and it sounds pretty good to me. Here's a photo of one guitar with an internal mic in it, from an angle where maybe you can (maybe?) see the mic. Note that I place the mic right inside the soundhole, where it picks up plenty of "string strike". This guitar has bracing in the way of where I usually place the mic, which is centered below the strings, for probably even more string sound, but this still works.

IMG_3094.jpg

Instead he uses complimentary frequency taking the mids and bass from the SBT and a reverse notch of the trebles from the sound hole to pick up authentic string strike.

Right, this is the standard way people generally do dual source with a mic, tho I'm not following the "reverse notch" part. The mic is boomy inside the guitar, so you roll the low end off. Many pickups suffer from issues in the upper mids and highs, so you EQ those, complementary to the mic. People have been doing this for ages with 2-channel preamps with EQ, and various commercial dual source systems incorporate this idea, like the Anthem, the old B-Band XOR system, which had a crossover, or even the Baggs dual source. I imagine this is why the MagMic's mic is so thin - they're letting the mic handle the highs, and the mag take care of the lows, tho I think it's a bit overdone. The Rare Earth Blend (another good sounding Mag) has perhaps a better balance between the two, but isn't quite as warm a pickup, for better or worse.

[andydepressant]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Hmm, I wouldn't call the MagMic a soundhole mic, it's a magnetic soundhole pickup, similar to the Sunrise, etc, but with a small mic in the bottom.

When I add a mic, to a guitar you can barely see it, and it sounds pretty good to me. Here's a photo of one guitar with an internal mic in it, from an angle where maybe you can (maybe?) see the mic. Note that I place the mic right inside the soundhole, where it picks up plenty of "string strike". This guitar has bracing in the way of where I usually place the mic, which is centered below the strings, for probably even more string sound, but this still works.

Attachment 20187



Right, this is the standard way people generally do dual source with a mic, tho I'm not following the "reverse notch" part. The mic is boomy inside the guitar, so you roll the low end off. Many pickups suffer from issues in the upper mids and highs, so you EQ those, complementary to the mic. People have been doing this for ages with 2-channel preamps with EQ, and various commercial dual source systems incorporate this idea, like the Anthem, the old B-Band XOR system, which had a crossover, or even the Baggs dual source. I imagine this is why the MagMic's mic is so thin - they're letting the mic handle the highs, and the mag take care of the lows, tho I think it's a bit overdone. The Rare Earth Blend (another good sounding Mag) has perhaps a better balance between the two, but isn't quite as warm a pickup, for better or worse.

Right. Yes, I'm sure I'm not coming up with anything new. I'd just like to combine the ToneDexter wizardry and a sound hole option without having to buy a pretty much redundant Soltice to make the phase and EQ of the sound hole mic compatible.

Though maybe I have that phase issue wrong?

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by andydepressant

Right. Yes, I'm sure I'm not coming up with anything new. I'd just like to combine the ToneDexter wizardry and a sound hole option without having to buy a pretty much redundant Soltice to make the phase and EQ of the sound hole mic compatible.

Though maybe I have that phase issue wrong?

I don't think you need to worry about phase - an internal mic tends to be more or less at random phase with any other source, and especially since you're usually rolling off the low end and just getting the "air", it doesn't matter. Most dual source systems have totally different response times, attacks, and so on between the transducers - in some cases, it's so different that "phase" isn't even the right word for it, you can get just totally different, almost uncorrelated sounds from each pickup. That's OK, it's part of the goal of a dual source system to add back in the complexity of the acoustic guitar - different parts of your guitar top are moving out of phase, so a dual source pickup system sort of crudely simulates that. Part of why single pickups tend to sound one-dimensional is that they're only picking up one part of the guitar, and they miss all that phase complexity (my theory anyway). You get a lot of that back, tho, just by playing thru a sound system in a real room, where the sound bounces around the room and arrives at listeners ears with all kinds of phase stuff going on, just from the room (reverb is also a way to add all kinds of phase complexity)

But to use a mic+ToneDexter, you would need a way to blend the 2 sources, so yes, you'd need a blender preamp of some kind. A ToneDexter with support for a 2nd channel would be very nice (and more expensive, and probably not needed by most people....). You can always use an external mic (or guitar-mounted mic) and just use your PA system or amp as the "blender", if your playing situation allows. Or you could route an internal mic to a separate preamp that supports it and again, run the mic preamp and tonedexter to a PA or amp, where they get blended.

Of course, many people find that ToneDexter kind of reduces the appeal of a dual source system - it restores a lot of the complexity and natural sound that people are trying to get from dual source systems. It's simpler and sounds good.

This is getting far away from "tonedexter in the field" :-)

[andydepressant]

Yes I agree.

I realised I didn't clarify what I meant by reverse notch. Basically I'd envision just controlling Q quotient and frequency and having everything else completely rolled off. That way you can just find what's missing in string attack and don't try to do anything else with that mic so make it as feedback resistant as possible.

[BluesKing777]

You can run an EQ device into the effects return in Tonedexter, if that helps.....

I have tried it with my Baggs Align EQ and my Fishman Pro EQ and while both these are great to get a nice sound from, for example, my Baggs M80 and M1A, a bit more work is needed to EQ a Tonedextered sound, a much fuller thing to work on than the ‘straight line’ soundhole pickups. I gave up.

My wishlist for Tonedexter 2 is the impossible, I have been told. One that makes a soundhole pickup sound like a mic’d acoustic. , so I can slip a pickup in an unaltered vintage guitar.....


BluesKing777.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by andydepressant

Yes I agree.

I realised I didn't clarify what I meant by reverse notch. Basically I'd envision just controlling Q quotient and frequency and having everything else completely rolled off. That way you can just find what's missing in string attack and don't try to do anything else with that mic so make it as feedback resistant as possible.

This is an interesting idea, let us know if you try it. I suspect you'd find that the string attack isn't just one narrow frequency. You should be able to get what you are looking for just with the usual approach of rolling off the low end of a mic, ideally with a high pass filter, so you only have the highs. A little bit goes a long way, and you're not likely to feedback (at least not due just to the mic - acoustics tend to feed back at higher volumes no matter what)

On the other hand, playing around with ToneDexter lately, I hear plenty of string attack when I use a pick, so I may not be understanding what sound you're going for.

[shufflebeat]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

I suspect you'd find that the string attack isn't just one narrow frequency.

It should also be noted that the EQ profile of a signal alone doesn't dictate the subjective experience of "guitar-ness". I sound-tech regularly for one band where the guitarist swaps between a Lowden and a Takamine. The Lowden can, on it's on, sound bright and in-your-face until the band kicks in at which time the Lowden's attack can disappear into the mix. The Tak, on the other hand, can sound more mellow but even at relatively lower levels can clearly be heard adding percussive detail to the overall sound.

The meters, RTA and my ears would suggest we are hearing a similar band of frequencies but there's something about the character that makes for very different results.