Been thinking about these recently. Most of my live acoustic playing over the years has been mic'd, and if I've had to plug in then mentally I've always just written off getting a sound that's going to particularly inspire me and come at it from an angle of practicality (e.g. gigs/festivals where you only get a quick line check and off you go).
But recently I've been gravitating to a lighter right hand approach, more bare fingers etc and thinking I might choose to plug in more often so I can maintain that light touch, and maybe use lighter strings, without having to worry about putting enough level into the front of a mic. So that in turn has got me thinking about these boxes.
My previous experience was years ago with a Fishman Spectrum Aura. I found that it only sounded good with an undersaddle piezo and then only with the IR (or "image" in Fishman's language") turned all the way up - and when it was all the way up things had this kind of honky quality. You could turn the image down but then you'd hear the piezo and franky I'd rather just give up playing than have to listen to that hideous buzzy quacky shitty piezo sound.
But these newer products claim to work well with my preferred pickups (K&K pure mini) and even magnetic soundhole pickups, and they give you the option of capturing your own guitars. I still hear that honkiness on some of the ToneDexter demos but maybe it's EQable out?
Anyway, keen to hear people's real world experiences. Ta.
Comments
The best results I've achieved with the TD have been when using an sm57 and a soundhole plug while training. The best result with the Mooer has been with the help of Cuki79 and Jonfields45 at acousticguitarforum who have developed software for creating IRs at home.
I use my TD for pub gigs with a Takamime ef341sc (stock Palathetic pickup) and Mandola (K&K Twin Spot) and get regular positive comments on the sound. I run it from a battery pack which makes it very gig-friendly.
However, if you're looking for the acoustic sound of your guitar you may be disappointed. Both pedals if well set up and used with a sympathetic playing style can make a very believable and musical acoustic sound, particularly in a band mix scenario, but if you've been playing in nice rooms with nice mics and your expectations are very specific then you may not achieve that.
The best way to experiment with the possibilities is to record your pickup sound and play back the recording through a convolution reverb VST (i.e., Reaverb in Reaper) with IRs loaded.
Hmmm.....
I still retired both pickups in the end but that was always the plan anyway.
I've recently started doing a more complex solo show that involves electric sounds and some parallel acoustic/electric action, plus various effects, octave, pads etc and so I've moved over to a Boss GT1000 Core as a single box solution. I've recorded IRs of all my acoustic instruments and it works well enough for what I need. The pure tone isn't quite as good as the ToneDexter, but good enough for my purposes at the moment.
I guess this is a long-winded way of saying I have a ToneDexter available if you're interested!
Trading feedback here
Haven’t had time to try any different mics or my K&K equipped Collings yet but I have high expectations.
Just discovered the Nux Optima and it may be useful for me.
One thing I'll add is this health warning - IRs give you your guitar but louder. That's exactly what I want, all the time. It's not what everyone wants - some people actually want a bump in the bass, or a different response, so worth thinking about that because other solutions are better for that. It can also thoroughly disorientate piezo-addled sound guys who don't know what to do with a sound resembling an actual acoustic coming at them through the DI.....so I've had a couple of shockers as a result of that when there wasn't time to get it right. Same thing used to happen to me when I was using a Lyric internal mic.
http://acousticir.free.fr/
If you decide to move on your Nux, though, let me know.
Thanks. That could be useful. I've just got a Quad Cortex, and am looking for some IRs to use it with my acoustic.
From what I can see, the idea with these devices is to
- record my own guitar acoustically
- create an IR and
- then load it onto one of these devices
But my Thinline doesn't sound very nice acoustically - and so that's not what I'm looking for.
How would I create (or get my hands on) an impulse response that will make my thinline Guitar sound like a full-bodied acoustic guitar? Is it merely trial and error with a bunch of existing impulse responses?