Tonedexter in the field

[Doug Young]

I had an interesting opportunity this past week. I was teaching at a guitar camp and I brought along my ToneDexter to let campers try. We trained a handful of guitars, just plugged them in right on stage, quickly aimed a mic at them, and let them train while listening in headphones, and then letting everyone hear the results thru a PA (QSC K10s) in a medium sized room. We had all kinds of guitars, pickups and players, with a tendency toward heavy strummers. We had uniformly great results, some of these guitars sounded so bad with the pickup that I don't know how they were able to play, and ToneDexter made a stunning difference, that was clear to everyone listening in the room. I was actually surprised myself how well it worked - it may be that the worse the pickup, the greater the improvement. In most cases, the transformation was far greater than what I've experienced with my guitars.

Two examples were especially interesting. One guy had a Martin with the built in Aura. We trained with the Aura off, but then were able to compare the pickup, the ToneDexter, and the Aura. In this case, the pickup sounded really bad, the Aura sounded not great in a different way, and the ToneDexter was really good. It was three different sounds, with TD easily winning. The player's comment was that thru ToneDexter sounded like a high end guitar. The TD output actually seemed to sound better than the guitar sounded acoustically. But especially interesting being able to compare TD and a built-in Aura.

The other case was a failure of sorts. This was a really good player, who got a pretty decent plugged in sound to start with, tho with obvious quack when he dug in. ToneDexter made the quack go away, and was definitely an improved sound, but maybe not as dramatic as others. The player said the sound thru ToneDexter reminded him of how his guitar sounded when he was playing on the couch. Unfortunately, he didn't mean that as a complement - he said everyone in his band used USTs and that "quack" was part of the band's sound, he didn't want a natural acoustic sound, so he wasn't sure ToneDexter would be useful for him. Hard to argue with that - everyone has their own idea of the sound they're going for.

Oh, another notable case was that we also got to try a new V-braced Taylor with the ES-2. That guitar sounded quite good as-is, but ToneDexter still made an improvement.

Anyway, it was fun and somewhat eye-opening to try ToneDexter in a real world setting with a variety of guitars/pickups/players, to hear how it worked for players with very different playing styles than me, and to try training really quick and dirty, just standing right on stage, training seconds before playing thru a PA.

[Gordon Currie]

Fantastic post. Interesting to try an array of guitars one after another and have them ALL improve.

I'll bet there are a few more Tonedexters on wishlists now

[BluesKing777]

Preaching to the well and truly converted here, Doug!

What a marvelous device!

What character setting sounded best in the PA?



BluesKing777.

[martingitdave]

This story makes perfect sense to me. I’ve had some great results with the Tondexter tool.

[AeroUSA]

I always say, there’s nothing like trying these things in the field (although I prefer playing inside!)

[Schau_ins_Regal]

Doug, many thanks for your insights.

May I ask you for a personal opinion?

I currently have a dual-source setup consisting of Dazzos, a DPA4061 and a Headway EDB-2.

What do you think will deliver the most natural sound:

- the two pickups with a Grace Felix or
- the Dazzos with a ToneDexter?

[Mbroady]

Thanks for sharing the experience

I have heard nothing but good things about the tonedexter and look forward to sampling it with my K&K equipped guitars.

Were there any Carbon fiber guitars that were part of the experiment?

[guitaniac]

Thanks for the post, Doug.

What training mic did you use? Just curious. I'm on the verge of ordering a Slate ML-2 because I think a quality directional mic (as opposed to an omni-directional measurement mic) will give me more control (via positioning) of the tonal balance of the WaveMaps.

Regarding the poor Aura results in one case, I'm guessing that particular guitar/pickup rig was substantially different (in some regard) from the guitar/pickup rig which the Aura folks used to create the model-specific sound images for that particular model. The big advantage of ToneDexter is that it enables the user to make WaveMaps which are very specific to the actual performance guitar.

Regarding the player who prefers the UST sound, I'm reminded of a comment which someone posted on a guitar forum around ten years ago. He opined that some day we'd have EFX pedals designed for folks who want to bring back that "retro" UST sound.

Seriously, though, I think that part of the problem is that the ToneDexter sound is so natural that the player on stage doesn't get as much of a sense that the pickup system is actually on and cranked up to a sufficient level. I've had several occasions when I thought the guitar level (with ToneDexter) was too low, only to note later, when listening to my recording from the "house" side, that the guitar sound was plenty loud.

[Marshall]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

. . . , he said everyone in his band used USTs and that "quack" was part of the band's sound, he didn't want a natural acoustic sound, so he wasn't sure ToneDexter would be useful for him. Hard to argue with that - everyone has their own idea of the sound they're going for. . . . ,

I play with a guy in a church band. He plays a 1970s Ovation (thin body plywood top). For years I've been suggesting he could try some of my pedals, Fishman Aura, etc, which were MADE for his type of guitar pickup.
He says, "No. I like the cutting power of this guitar."



I make videos of the services with a nice stereo recording. All I can hear is his crunchy crackly guitar.

[Marshall]

As long as we're talking ToneDexter in the field; last night I tried using it at an open mic without the power chord, but instead getting power from a regular 9V Lithium battery. It worked fine. It was only a 3 song setup, so the thing was under battery power for only 15 minutes. But it worked fine.

I used a little 9V battery clip chord to the power-in on the ToneDexter.

[MrErikJ]

Doug brings up an interesting point here that we sometimes forget: live tone is not always about perfect replication of the guitar's natural sound. It's a great design feature for the TD to feature the blend knob as sometimes a touch of piezo-fuzz really gives the guitar the presence it needs to cut through the mix. If the UST and its associated quack was entirely negative, it would never have become the amplification standard that it is.

I recently saw that Seth Avett uses the Martin Gold Thinline and Dave Matthews the Matrix Infinity and I thought "these two strummers are using quacky USTs? Silly." But upon consideration, what else (besides a mag) would work? Could they play at those volumes in a large band with a K&K or Dazzo and be heard without feedback? Probably not. The TD definitely seems like a the great equalizer but we musn't believe that the tonal artifacts of the piezo are entirely without merit.

[RockerDuck]

Good to see the tonedexter review.

[shufflebeat]

I've been trying the TD in my guise as a sound tech with everyone that'll stand still long enough and I think I have a pretty good idea of how it'll fit into my own performance (not yet).

Everyone is impressed by the idea which makes me a little wary of their initial enthusiasm. My most successful experiment has been with a Barcus Berry fitted fiddle. In training (Rode nt3) the fiddlist was not as convinced as others, preferring the unprovoked assault of the dry pickup to anything I coud do. I obviously went with him for that gig but saved the wavemap and snuck it into the next soundcheck without warning. I flattened the channel EQ completely and relied on the TD sound which, as a result, meant the Aux EQ (pre channel EQ) was for problem solving rather than sund shaping. Happy fiddlist, happy fluter, happy me.

Which brings me to my only "but":

I understand why some guitarists particularly might prefer a dry pickup sound. It's less sophisticated and more one dimensional but it has to fit into a small space within a band sound rather than define it's own space. In this case a quick slap with the channel EQ can kill the worst of the harshness and warm up the character without disappearing in the mix.

In my regular setup the fiddle is right up front and is only improved in the fiddle/flute sub-mix by the effect of the TD.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by BluesKing777

P

What character setting sounded best in the PA?

I tried a few with at least one person, but mostly, we just used the full CH2 setting. Interesting, now that I think about that - I usually use lower values or the blend myself. But playing soundman and listening to others thru the PA instead of playing myself, I thought the CH2 sounded really good, at least on these guitars/pickups.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by guitaniac

What training mic did you use?

I just had one of my KM184s. We really did no fine tuning of this. Most players who aren't used to recording are really bad at standing/sitting still - and everyone I tried this on was just standing on the stage. I was going for quick trials, so I aimed it roughly at the neck/body joint and hoped they didn't move around too much. One shot training, then see how it sounded.

Regarding the player who prefers the UST sound, I'm reminded of a comment which someone posted on a guitar forum around ten years ago. He opined that some day we'd have EFX pedals designed for folks who want to bring back that "retro" UST sound.

Well, we have plugins that can replicate scratchy records and noisy cassette tape, so I suspect he's right.