Acoustic Gig Setup

thomasross20

Oh, never knew that. 

TBH I like things simple and a TC Ditto looper for £50 looks good to me. 

I also quite fancy some sort of "harmony" pedal (or octave pedal) [Mooer pitch shift / Digitech whammy look good]

Sorry - thread has taken a detour lol

--> Mooer pitch box is great for changing key of the song and playing the same notes lol

thomasross20

Jeeeesus, L R Baggs £280 for an M80 sound hole pickup!?

DI - will a typical DI box work for electric and acoustic? It's the same sort of signal it's picking up, after all? 

The Baggs GigPro looks good to me, to be honest - nice and small. Dunno about the whole belt clip thing, though. 

steamabacus

I think there's a TC Electronic BodyRez pedal in the classifieds. That and a basic soundhole magnetic?

thomasross20

Wow, that BodyRez is interesting!

Oh man, my head hurts..... so many options - this isn't my realm (yet) - I'm going to take a few weeks and do some proper research on acoustic gigging and what I need. 

thomasross20

Jesus, the Seymour Duncan Woody is like £30-50.... compared to £200+ for a Baggs!

(Can hear why though, listening to YouTube vids, but a bit costly perhaps for me, not sure)

ICBM

The Baggs M1A is only just over £100 and is very good. The Duncan Woody is quite primitive, not great output level and needs an external preamp which puts the cost back up. (All passive pickups will need at least a DI box to go through the PA.)

An endpin jack in the guitar isn't invasive really, and is a lot less of a nuisance than a trailing cable or having to take it off the pickup every time, although you can do that with the M1A.

I hated the looper on the Flashback, the switch is horrible and makes it hard to get the loops in time.

thomasross20

I wonder if I need a looper - just because I saw it for £50...! Certainly if I were doing album stuff I'd need one but fat chance I'd be doing that stuff. 

End pin jack does sound tempting, must admit. 

M80 sounds better than M1 to me but might be the way things were recorded on the YouTube vids I saw. If M1(A?) will do the trick I'll just get that. If active no need for DI. But maybe passive + DI is best option.

sw67

My set up with a taylor gs mini is jjb electronics piezo pick up - orchid di - through my pedal board to pa. sounds great and if you dont mind some soldering and glueing cost around £60

Phil_aka_Pip

steamabacus said:

Back in the eighties, a mate of mine had one of the earliest Washburn solid acousics. It was great for playing in a full band situation but definitely sounded a bit 'piezo' for his singer-songwriter stuff (more recent versions may well sound better). It also felt a bit 'stiff' to play compared to a full acoustic. Nice guitar, though.

Interesting you should say "stiff". I like mine, but sometimes I think it feels like an electric guitar with heavy strings on it, whereas acoustics I have which wear the same string gauge do on occasions feel a bit "looser". Not really sure how to put that.

Mine now has bridge saddles made of a different kind of plastic (you can get it for the joins between sections of the worktop in your kitchen). Apparently it works easily (so says luthier Colin), so making saddles the shape you want is a doddle. And the tone quality is way improved.

My main criticisms are

• The battery compartment requires a screwdriver to access it (a clicky flip top would be nice)
• The waist of the instrument is not in a convenient place for me to sit the guitar on my right thigh when playing 

Winny_Pooh

Preamps can often be a hassle and futile unless you are using a passive piezo. 

Best is to buy an active LR baggs or fishman soundhole pickup and plug straight into a mixer/acoustic amp.

Passive magnetic pickups like the woody are not good.

thomasross20

Active straight into a PA definitely sounds a good bet....... 

ICBM

thomasross20 said:

Active straight into a PA definitely sounds a good bet....... 

The soundman will also like you for it at gigs where there is one, because you can't bugger around with the sound .

Nothing worse than trying to EQ an electro-acoustic to sound good through the PA when the player has already set the onboard graphic in some strange way that fights what the soundman is trying to do - other than if the player then changes it…

Electro-acoustics are the work of Satan. Mark these words.

thomasross20

Lol...
Ok so it's decided.
Active sound hole pickup - Crikey, gear list is short lol!

thomasross20

I now wish I just bought the Larrivee OM02E which has this pre-installed:

http://www.thomann.de/gb/shadow_m_sonic_a_nfx_vt.htm

I could maybe buy the same thing and get a tech to do it... or go the M80 (active) route. 

Which do you think would be best? 

ICBM

I would try the M1A unless you're quite sure the M80 sounds better enough to justify more than twice the price.

I don't like Shadow stuff, or onboard electronics like that. Getting too close to an electro.

Just my opinion of course!

thomasross20

No no, fair enough! Just sent you a PM but no need to reply with pickup stuff as you've basically covered it there!

(EDIT - and I remember you don't like under-saddle pups either - basically it's soundhole or bust lol)

Is it fairly easy to remove the M1A (or similar) when not playing through a PA? E.g. just at home. I think the answer is no as I read you have to take the strings off to change the battery etc.

EDIT:

The M80 isn't that much more than the M1A and it has battery indicator. Supposed to sound better by sensing more body frequencies (look like the second coil is dropped and free to vibrate and an accelerometer is used to detect vibration) but that also means it's slightly more prone to feedback.

Neither have any sort of EQ or notch filtering. Some people do say it would still be good to have a DI (Para DI often mentioned) but I'll give that a miss for now and see how I get on with either the M80 or M1A.

ICBM

thomasross20 said:

and I remember you don't like under-saddle pups either - basically it's soundhole or bust lol

I don't mind a plain passive undersaddle - they don't sound great DI'd on their own, but with a decent offboard preamp they can, and they're also the ideal source to drive a Fishman Aura, which is the most realistic-sounding solution I've found yet.

I just don't believe in mounting complex electronics in the instrument if you can avoid it - it's unnecessary and can leave you really stuck if something fails, and are harder to replace or upgrade. An active soundhole pickup at least avoids almost all these problems too.

thomasross20 said:

Is it fairly easy to remove the M1A (or similar) when not playing through a PA? E.g. just at home. I think the answer is no as I read you have to take the strings off to change the battery etc.

You can undo the two mounting screws and pop the whole thing out fairly easily, although you will probably chew up the screws fairly quickly if you do it a lot. You can actually leave the endpin jack and cable in place, although the loose cable may then rattle inside the body. Or leave it with the external cable and only put the pickup in at all when you really need it.

thomasross20 said:

The M80 isn't that much more than the M1A and it has battery indicator. Supposed to sound better by sensing more body frequencies (look like the second coil is dropped and free to vibrate and an accelerometer is used to detect vibration) but that also means it's slightly more prone to feedback.

In that case get the M1A - feedback is more of an issue at a gig than perfect sound quality.

thomasross20 said:

Neither have any sort of EQ or notch filtering. Some people do say it would still be good to have a DI (Para DI often mentioned) but I'll give that a miss for now and see how I get on with either the M80 or M1A.

You don't need EQ - there's onboard fixed EQ to give a decent acoustic sound. Everything else you do at the PA or acoustic amp. A notch filter can be handy, but not essential especially if you're playing somewhere with a hands-on soundman.

thomasross20

Fishman Aura - the Martin OCMP series come with those....

So! Now I just have to decide whether I drill holes in the guitar myself in order to fit pins or get a tech to do it. I assume they don't have to take the top off the guitar or anything!

IanSavage

Slight aside, but it might be worth saving an eBay search for an Aphex Acoustic Xciter pedal; I absolutely swear by them as 'sounds-better' boxes, with the massive plus of an XLR output for easier connection to a 'proper' sound desk.

Feed an active soundhole pickup into one of those (look out for the model that can be phantom-powered from the desk which have a little picture of a ghost by the XLR socket, saves buggering about with batteries) and you should have a simple-but-totally-effective acoustic gigging setup.

ESBlonde

In the same way that an electric guitar is much improved by the choice of amplifier, so is the sound of an acoustic guitar (and voice). If you are spending money to improve the sound of your acoustic guitar, start with a pro quality PA which will make average guitars sound better than a class guitar/PU through an average or cheap PA. Speakers make so much difference, then the mixer/eq then the stuff plugged in.
These days small portable professional quality sound systems are readily available, ex hire stuff makes it affordable too.