Review and comparison of Schertler AG6

Schertler USA · #1 01-08-2019, 05:15 AM

This is a long, but very thorough review and comparison with a Piezo pickup.
Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/cvTX-XlsPeU

lkingston · #2 01-08-2019, 09:57 AM

I have Schertler AG-6/S-Mic pickups in my three acoustic guitars because I love this pickup so much. The Gear Gossip review is as good a review as I’ve seen, but I think he misses some things.

Here is what I think he missed:

The S-Mic is an omnidirectional mic. The good thing about an omni is that it sounds very natural and has no proximity effect miking really close (like in a soundhole). The Fishman Rare Earth Blend is a directional mic. In my opinion this makes it less prone to feedback, but a little boomer sounding. Directionality in a guitar mounted mic is a preference. I prefer an omni mic in this situation, but that is just me.

The other thing is that the mic is extremely immune to handling and touch noises. In many mag/mic pickups (like the Skysonic), the mic picks up so much touch that it acts as much like a body sensor as it does a mic. Some people might prefer having the mic pick up touch and function partially as a body sensor. When the mic does this, you can play percussive styles with a much lower mic level. This will give you a lot of percussion sensitivity with less feedback, much like you get with an LR Baggs M80. The advantage of the mechanical isolation of the S-Mic is that you get more “mic air” vs touch sound. Again, this is a personal taste thing, but I like the way Schertler does it.

From my perspective, the Schertler AG-6/S-Mic is a pickup with two purposes: playing live and recording.

For recording, you get a wonderful sound if you turn the mic all the way up. I don’t know what the exact blend is when you do this. In the review the Gear Gossip guy says it is 50%. I’m not sure if you can really think of it this way because it is not the same at all frequencies. There is something going on where it is almost like a crossover between the low and high frequencies and you are hearing more magnetic pickup on the lows and more mic on the highs. This gives you a very natural sound that records well. That is to say it records well if you are using a headphone mix. You can’t monitor with a speaker because it will feed back like crazy. Even if you turn the monitor way down, the mic will pick up the speaker and give you all sorts of weird phase shift strangeness. The sound is very much like what you would expect if you taped an omni mic into the soundhole for recording, except that I think the low frequencies are better.

Playing live is different. From my experimenting and experience I would say that you can turn the mic up over a sound system only 10% or less. Any more and it will feed back like crazy. Even if you can avoid the feedback, it will sound boxy as the mic picks up the speaker. It is quite a trick to learn to make such fine adjustments on the mic dial because you have to turn so little mic on. At that point, you will hear just a little tapping if you touch the body, but their is a surprising amount of mic air. You can easily test and confirm this. Tap on the body: not too much. Snap your fingers over the sound hole: there it is. The mic is picking up more vibrations over the air than it is through physical coupling. What is surprising is how much beauty such a small amount of mic adds to the magnetic sound. I absolutely adore the sound I get with just a touch of mic added in!

So my rule of thumb is when playing live: 10% or less mic. When recording: mic all the way up or blend to taste and use headphones.

Another note on this. If I was recording in a soundproof room in a studio, I would still use a high quality mic on a stand. For recording at home though with heating and AC ductwork, a refrigerator in the kitchen and cars driving by the house outside, the degree to which I can get a good quality recorded guitar sound free from background noise is stunning! This is a wonderful way to record guitar at home!

Marshall · #3 01-08-2019, 12:26 PM

Very interesting.

lkingston · #4 01-08-2019, 01:05 PM

I didn’t like the sound very much of the contact mic. It sounded like he had a bit of phase shift weirdness between it and the magnetic pickup. It could just be his placement of it though.

Spook · #5 01-08-2019, 07:41 PM

Hmm.. should be compared to other magnetic pickups in the same price range. Not a piezo.

I have an AG6 with the mic. The pickup by itself isn't in the same league as a Sunrise which is what I usually use. However, with the mic, it opens up and sounds quite good. Of course you need a preamp that will support the TRS cable and support 2 channels.

In any case, I'm not able to use it. The original was sent back to Switzerland (I paid shipping) because it stopped working within warranty. Schertler agreed it was broken and sent me a replacement. Unfortunately the replacement stopped working in short order as well which makes me wonder what bin they pulled the replacement out of. Sigh. Wasn't going to ship it again and pay for a repair or replacement as the warranty had expired. This was all a few years back so hopefully they have addressed any reliability problems.

lkingston · #6 01-09-2019, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spook

...Of course you need a preamp that will support the TRS cable and support 2 channels.

That is not correct. The Fishman Rare Earth Blend will make use of a TRS cable for separate mic and magnetic pickup connections but the AG-6/S-Mic will not. Just a mono mixed out. The RS connection is just for switching power (like most acoustic guitar electronics).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spook

...Unfortunately the replacement stopped working in short order as well which makes me wonder what bin they pulled the replacement out of. Sigh. Wasn't going to ship it again and pay for a repair or replacement as the warranty had expired. This was all a few years back so hopefully they have addressed any reliability problems.

If you are trying to use it in stereo, or not shorting the RS connection, this may be why it isn’t working.

Spook · #7 01-09-2019, 02:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lkingston

That is not correct. The Fishman Rare Earth Blend will make use of a TRS cable for separate mic and magnetic pickup connections but the AG-6/S-Mic will not. Just a mono mixed out. The RS connection is just for switching power (like most acoustic guitar electronics).

If you are trying to use it in stereo, or not shorting the RS connection, this may be why it isn’t working.

The old DTAR (which I used to use) and a Grace Felix (what I'm using now) also support a TRS two channel setup. However it has nothing to do with stereo. It's just two channels: one for the pickup, one for the mic.

As for a single ended output, the Schertler supplied cable that goes from the pickup the the output jack is a TRS. The guitar output jack that Schertler provides is a TRS. Schertler doesn't tell you how things are split. It doesn't say if a standard or TRS is required or if there is just a single ended output when using the mic. Though if that were the case then why the TRS internal cable and output jack? I did learn via email exchanges with their tech that the mic is solely battery powered and you don't need/want to provide a 10V P-P power to it as you would some electret mics. If you have some documentation on the AG6/mic setup would love to see it as next to nothing on this configuration is provided by Schertler.

So.. as for the failure, when it stopped working a TRS to two 1/4" splitter was tried, a TRS, and a standard 1/4". As well as battery, connections end to end with my Fluke.. et al. As you might expect, there is a tendency to troubleshoot a bit before ending up with a $350 paperweight.

lkingston · #8 01-09-2019, 06:35 PM

Not to second-guess you, but I am absolutely certain that the mic and pickup only are available together through the TS connection and the RS connection is only there to act as a power switch. There is no separating of the mic and pickup outputs through the TS and RS connections like you are trying to do. The Fishman REB is wired so that you can separate the mic and the magnetic pickup. The Shertler is not. If you try to pull separate TS and RS audio, the pickup won't get battery power and won't work. I'll try to find it in the manual to post.

Marshall · #9 01-09-2019, 08:13 PM

To my ears the Schertler with the mic sounds very good. But feedback would be too much of an issue. The contact mic with the mag is an intriguing option. But the pricing puts that combo up @ $500. Pretty pricey. The mag by itself sounds like a mag. A nice mag. But still a magnetic pickup, which is not to my preference. I've got a Fishman Rare Earth (no blend) in my travel guitar now (GS Mini). That's about as good a mag sound as I've heard. (I like it better than the Baggs M1A & M80). The Schertler mag by itself doesn't seem to improve on any of that.

But that's just my ears and preference.

But worse you can't use a mag with the ToneDexter, so I'll avoid that for now.

Spook · #10 01-09-2019, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lkingston

Not to second-guess you, but I am absolutely certain that the mic and pickup only are available together through the TS connection and the RS connection is only there to act as a power switch. There is no separating of the mic and pickup outputs through the TS and RS connections like you are trying to do. The Fishman REB is wired so that you can separate the mic and the magnetic pickup. The Shertler is not. If you try to pull separate TS and RS audio, the pickup won't get battery power and won't work. I'll try to find it in the manual to post.

Unless it is via some cryptic path, there is no manual to speak of. And yes, the RS is sometimes used to turn a preamp on. I'll take your word for it. Of course, standard 1/4" plugs were tried so it's kind of moot.

My first AG6 was declared dead by the Schertler tech after investing the $50 to ship it to him. The second I tried everything reasonable to get working. Still a deceased parrot. So unless plugging a TRS cable into an AG6 causes it to permanently fail, and wouldn't that be an interesting design, I've had 2 of them stop working making me less than an AG6 fan.

lkingston · #11 01-09-2019, 08:44 PM

Hopefully I have better luck!

Spook · #12 01-10-2019, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lkingston

Hopefully I have better luck!

Smiles.. you have already. Mine didn't work long at all. Glad you are enjoying yours and hope it continues to give you good results. And thanks for pointing out my mistake on being able to split out the mic (though I tried it different ways and thought the std cable was only delivering the base pickup before everything stopped working). If yours works with a standard cable, that's obviously how they work and how others should hook theirs up.

lkingston · #13 01-10-2019, 08:06 AM

I agree that trying to connect the RS connections to an audio input shouldn’t have damaged the pickup. I wouldn’t expect it to work, but I also wouldn’t expect it to do any damage.

Not to be insultingly obvious, but you did check the battery right? That and the endpin cable.

This is a pretty expensive pickup. You shouldn’t be getting two bad ones in a row.

tadol · #14 01-10-2019, 09:02 AM

Good thread - and good advice about the setup - I have mixed feelings about the pickup, as there are alot of great options, and as this thread points out, there isn’t much tech support or documentation on this one, which is really unfortunate. I’ve gotten decent sound from mine, but I’ve also been frustrated by not finding good info on it (which is why I really appreciate your info, lkingston).

But it kinda highlights my concerns with Schertler - great stuff, but tech support or documentation is sadly lacking (especially considering the cost), and if you have a problem or failure, costs to get things repaired can be considerable, and options few. And its the lack of good tech support that may lead to some of the failures - since you have to kinda try things out, you seem to run a risk of damaging the equipment. I have a Unico amp that really sounds great, but somehow, with just 1 guitar at medium volume, 3 power transistors suddenly fried (but no fuses) which cost me almost $300 to get fixed. All I can think is that I did something to cause it, but the tech couldn’t even tell what or why, and while you’d think that it should be close to impossible to have that kind of catastrophic failure, apparently its very possible.

I still love the sound of all my Schertler equipment and plan on keeping it, but I also think its probably gonna end up costing me more than most other options, long term -

Schertler USA · #15 01-10-2019, 11:32 AM

We have online manual’s for each of our products that are extremely detailed. Many people may not realize that they are there, but there is a download section for each product and the manual is there in a PDF format. Also, we have authorized repair facilities across the country. In addition Support is always available by email or phone if necessary. While the company is located in Switzerland, which does make for a six hour time difference, I am located right here in sunny South Carolina. I am always available to help and if Switzerland needs to be involved we only have to wait until they are open the next morning .
Anyone can feel free to contact me if they need help. I will always do my best !
Thanks, Dave