Acoustic Preamp

[deedee]

Got a tanglewood resonator for chrimbo and whist the humbucker in the neck is fine. The piezzo in the bridge seems a little underwhelming.

Play into a 15 w laney valve and want to use it for home use and maybe a little recording. Not really bothered about effects but a bit of eq would be useful. I think I need a preamp, could any one point me in the right direction.

The leccy/acoustic thing is new to me as Ive always been a leccy player, so please be gentle.

[evilmags]

Fishman Aura is pretty good, and will serve as a preamp for any accoustic. It is demoed on their website and well worth investigation. The resonator patch is from a Sheerhorn, so should be pretty good.

[Lewy]

The resonator patch is from a Sheerhorn, so should be pretty good.

Hmmm....yes but that's a Dobro derivative (spider bridge) and the Tanglewood will almost certainly be a biscuit bridge - very different sounds. I've read that the word from Fishman is the reason the Aura has no National-type sound images (or whatever they call it) is that they just can't get an algorithm that works. That'd be a lot of money to spend for so-so results - if you are going to lay out that sort of wedge the MamaBear serves up much better reso sounds from a piezo pickup.

I'd say any preamp that offers a decent EQ and some compression would deliver the best results from a piezo'd singlecone.

[deedee]

Thanks guys.

Unplugged the reso has a great sound, really bluesy , as soon as it is plugged in , it just sounds like a really clean electric. Is there anyway around this?

[Lewy]

Thanks guys.

Unplugged the reso has a great sound, really bluesy , as soon as it is plugged in , it just sounds like a really clean electric. Is there anyway around this?

To be very honest with you....no.

To put it into perspective, I have a National Resophonic Delphi Deluxe factory fitted with a Highlander dedicated reso piezo. The Highlander pickup is regarded as being as good as it gets in terms of plugging in biscuit bridge resos and costs about the same as most entry level resos.

It sounds passable plugged into a good PA and lousy plugged into a guitar amp.

The way a resonator works just cannot be accurately reproduced by a piezo.

Enjoy the acoustic sound of your reso - that's how they were designed ;-)

[evilmags]

I'd also imagine that unlike a flatop accoustic a Reso is loud enough to mic up with an SM57 without having the sensitivity of the mic so high that it screaches feedback at you.

[deedee]

Lewy.

Thanks, to be honest, I use it unplugged most of the time as the sound is great. Its a pretty flexible guitar , IF you treat it as two seperate instruments, i.e an electric and an acoustic. Its my take to work and play anywhere geet.

I can see me investing in a really decent resonator at some stage.......

[Lewy]

I'd also imagine that unlike a flatop accoustic a Reso is loud enough to mic up with an SM57 without having the sensitivity of the mic so high that it screaches feedback at you.

Yep...in fact a 57 is absolutely the best mic to use for the job. Close micing a reso is much more like micing up a speaker than an acoustic guitar. Michael Messer never uses condensors, either live or in the studio and sounds awesome. Brozman used to use 57s and then switched to 58s for some reason....sounded better before i.m.o.