Quote:
Originally Posted by SpruceTop
These two Larry Fishman articles jive with my timeline as I bought my second UST-equipped Martin about June 1983. Being that long ago, I don't remember if the saddle was split or not. I do remember there being a really hot second string that would twang out as I strummed or hit single notes on that string. As was my first UST-equipped Martin, the D-28E, the Martin MC-28E with the Thinline 332 was a superb-sounding guitar, acoustically, but fell flat on its face when amplified. After 1984, I stopped performing for a long time and lost track of where the pickup/preamp industry was headed. When I returned to guitaring in 2003, there were some new systems available installed on brands of guitars and also available as aftermarket systems. Are these newer systems markedly better than what was available in 1984? I feel that in some ways, yes, but I also feel the chase for "true acoustic tone" still continues. I think preamp-based technologies such as IR imaging, as available through the Aura and ToneDexter preamps, are just as or more important than the advances in pickup design.
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I can tell you what happened with guitar amplification after you started your hiatus from the scene. I moved to New England in 1984 and hung out with some very good musicians who used pickups in noisy bars because that was the only way that folks could actually hear the intricacies of what they were doing in that environment. The ringleader of our New Hampshire scene was Harvey Reid, the first Winfield fingerstyle champ. I remember him using a mag pickup with his 12 string, but he was also a pioneer in the art of blending a UST with an internal mic. That was a cutting edge thing at the time, and I believe that he may have already had some kind of relationship with the Fishman folks back then. I know for sure that he was an Aura beta tester for Fishman in the 2000s. Interestingly (to me at least), it was another Winfield competitor, four-time fingerstyle runner-up Geoff Bartley, who sold me my first pickup (a Dean Markley mag) around 1985 or '86. I'd been a smash-it-out for the mic guy up until that time, and hadn't even dreamed that playing with bare finger pads (rather than steel fingerpicks) was do-able in a noisy bar environment. It was an Ohio musician, John Vincent, who demonstrated how effective playing with bare finger pads and a pickup (a Thinline UST in his trusty D28) could be. He always had me roll the bass off to 9 o' clock, as I recall. It certainly wasn't the most natural amplified sound, but his playing made it sound good and folks could easily hear it in a "less than ideal" environment.
Oops. I should also mention that I heard my first Ovations while living in Nashville in '83. It was a bit of a culture shock for me, and a big part of what happened to guitar amplification in that time period. I also noticed that my Nashville songwriter friend Lee Domann was playing a Tak when he did an Ohio gig for us in the early '90s. I think he even mentioned that Taks (at the time) had a better rep for their amplified sound than for their acoustic sound.
12-29-2019, 04:38 PM
