Tonefiend Forum

Yeah, put me in the mag mike camp to. A big influence was Daniel Lanois, who runs an acoustic with a mag mic through a hot tweed combo. Such a great sound.

FWIW, I'm just returning from Boston, where I was hanging out with Larry Fishman from Fishman Transducers, discussing a couple of projects. He, of course, makes the retrofit Power Bridge, a piezo for electrics. I don't relate much to the sound, but he was telling me about his Aura system, which supplements the piezo sound with impulse responses derived from high-quality acoustic recordings. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm eager to see whether that changes my attitude about piezos and acoustics — and naturally, it would be interesting to do things the "wrong" way and try it with a solidbody.

In theory, having an array of options (mic, piezo, mag-mic, ir blending) should at least produce a new range of possible tone, regardless of whether or not they succeed in emulating a pure acoustic or not. But the reality for me is that the vast majority of new sounds just don't appeal to my ear. It could just be me, but most sound thin, harsh, or overly thwunky (like the godin variac instruments). I remember seeing Lindsey Buckingham performing live playing a variac to promote his album a couple years ago. I assumed that he must have been using it purely out of live necessity, but then I got the album and it was front and center. It put me off the whole album. On the other hand, I really like the sound that Justin Townes Earle gets from using a Baggs M80 in his Loar - a sort of gritty acoustic.

I guess my personal conclusion given the current state of tech is that you really need to start with a tone you like and just enhance it within reason. A solid body isn't going to sound like a naturally resonant acoustic - and why would you want it to? Stage volume is way down from 20 years ago and there are a ton of great sounding/playing acoustics to be had for less than $500.

The old recording mantra is that you can never remove room noise from a track. While it's not a perfect analogy, the same is largely true for the inherent acoustic properties of guitars. An acoustic guitar blends harmonics and dynamically projects sound. A solid body compresses and absorbs frequencies. Insofar as the body of an acoustic colors the sound, the body of an electric dumps paint all over it. So regardless of how you 'collect' the tone on a solid body, it will always have the 'room' noise that comes from a solid instrument. Adding IR and dynamic EQ is a good start, but you'd also need to 'expand' the signal, render the harmonics, and blend all that together while keeping the amplified dynamics clean and balanced. Even if you could manage all that processing while preserving phase etc., I daresay, the added noise and unnatural tone curve would not sound pleasant. Go into the discarded gear closet in any studio and you will find a pile of sonic maximizers and similar gear that was originally purchased to add 'life' to dead tracks. It never sounds convincing. So to conclude my ramble, I think you've got to start with a natural sound that appeals to you and color it to your liking with whatever pickup/mic system you prefer. But don't buy apples with the belief that painting them orange will fool people into thinking they're oranges.

That might have turned into a rant. Sorry. I just have a lot of bad memories of people bringing the wrong instruments to a session or gig and expecting me to magically convert it to the sound they want. Sometimes it can be done, usually it can't.

sorry Larry, I didn't mean to put you off the search. It was just a late night rant fueled by many frustrating attempts to get a solid body to convincingly sit in a mix like an acoustic. However, the uke is one instrument that can be made to sound like many other instruments so more power to ya. I am particularly proud of one recording where I turned a uke into a very pleasing classical guitar. So it goes.

my bad, multiac

ya know, I've got two theremins - one ss and one that a friend and I built from the original tube specs. They're great, but I have yet to use them live or on a recording because I haven't found the right place for them. It's a shame, because they're so much fun to play. My 'saw' is rusting on its shelf too.