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sm80808
Lokahi
347 Posts |
 Posted - 10/22/2007 : 5:37:30 PM
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A friend of mine and I are having a little debate, and I am wondering what you all think.
In a live situation, what plays a bigger part in tone production?
* the instrument (woods/body style/etc)
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* amplification and other factors (string gauge/amplifier/preamp/pick up)
The question:
In a live situation (as opposed to recording) where you need to be amplified, while assuming the same physical setup (action, electronics, etc), is the difference between an expensive custom or a mid-priced guitar that drastic? If so to what degree and why?
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Admin
Pupule
USA
4551 Posts |
Posted - 10/22/2007 : 6:56:01 PM
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| In the real world, it's probably going to be a combination of both. However, I'm going to venture to say that the pick up/preamp etc is going to be most important if amplified. My evidence is that there are plenty of gigging guitars out there that don't sound great unplugged but plugged in they sound great. |
Andy |
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wcerto
Ahonui
USA
5052 Posts |
Posted - 10/22/2007 : 7:57:19 PM
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I think you might be right, Andy. Ask Fran Guidry, I think when he played with Ocean, Mike & Paulie at Honey's that one Sunday in May, he had some sort of a travel guitar, maybe??? At first the sound gizmos weren't working properly and the guitar didn't sound like too much, but when they got all the gadgets working fine, oh, it sounded so sweet and nice.
Playing in a live situation, you must overcome all the ambient sounds, including people noise, so you really do need amplification. The subtleties of tone in a beautifully crafted wood acoustic guitar would be lost in a situation like that, but would be so mellow and sweet in a studio situation. |
Me ke aloha
Malama pono,
Wanda |
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Lawrence
Ha`aha`a
USA
1597 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 06:58:35 AM
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quote:
My evidence is that there are plenty of gigging guitars out there that don't sound great unplugged but plugged in they sound great.
Yep- hate to say it, but pickup and preamp make the biggest difference when plugged in. This is what made the Ovation guitars so popular on stage, they sound mediocre acoustically but pretty good plugged in.
Here are some general characteristics: A magnetic string pickup will sound much like an electric guitar but will have lots of output and low likely hood of feedback. A bridge pickup will sound somewhat more acoustic (usually with some piezo "quack" added) and usually is a little more susceptible to feedback than the magnetic pickup. Accelerometer versions (Baggs IBeam, Taylor Expression, etc), sound even more like a real acoustic guitar but have even less output and are even more likely to suffer from feedback. Then there are in-guitar microphones which are the most susceptible to feedback (but still better, from a feedback standpoint, than using an external stage mic).
And of course there are "blenders" which mix together several of these versions so the player can choose how much "real acoustic" guitar sound versus how much feedback immunity (or electric sound) to have at any given time.
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Mahope Kākou...
...El Lorenzo de Ondas Sonoras |
Edited by - Lawrence on 10/24/2007 2:59:46 PM |
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Fran Guidry
Ha`aha`a
USA
1579 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 07:28:38 AM
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The playability is in the guitar, the sound is in the electronics. One of my favorite guitars often gets nice comments from my coffee house audiences - "so clear" "so bright" - when the real sound of the guitar is rich and dark, nothing at all like the pickup sound. They're both lovely sounds, but they're completely unrelated.
Fran |
E ho`okani pila kakou ma Kaleponi
Slack Key Guitar in California - www.kaleponi.com
Slack Key on YouTube
Homebrewed Music Blog |
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Mark
Ha`aha`a
USA
1628 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 07:45:58 AM
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quote:
Then there are in-guitar microphones which are the most susceptible to feedback (but still better than using an external stage mic).
Not sure I'd agree on that one. A good external mic coupled with a good front of house engineer is far and away the best way to reproduce the sound of your guitar on stage. And yes, in that situation you are going to want to play a guitar that sounds good.
Which, incidentally, answers a question posted on another topic: Why would anyone travel with expensive handmade guitars as opposed to mid-line-easily-replaceble axes? In my case, it because my guitar is what I want to play on stage. I think most folks who play solo acoustic guitar will say the same.
(Note: I did once lose an "irreplacable" instrument. Funny thing: when I woke up the next day, the sky was still blue and the birds still sang. Taught me an important lesson.)
If it's a concert gig, I always let the sound engineer mic the guitar--even if I also use the pick-up and DI. Often we'll route the DI to the monitors for feedback reasons. Maybe 95% of the house sound will be mic, with just a tad of DI for definition and bass boost.
Which gets us to the other piece in the acoustic-electric puzzle: don't forget the DI!!! Most acoustic-electric guitar systems are designed to work in tandem with a specific DI like the Baggs, Fishman, etc. We've had this discussion before, BTW.
FWI: I've mixed a number of CDs where the engineer tracked an acoustic guitar using both studio mics and the guitar's internal mic. In no case have tracks using the internal mic made it to the final mix. Stick you ear inside the soundhole sometime and see for yourself....
On the other hand, if ya want to move around, forego the stage mics. |
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Podagee57
Lokahi
USA
280 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 08:02:02 AM
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DI?
. |
What? You mean high "E" is the TOP string. No way dude! That changes everything! |
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ArtSap
Lokahi
USA
267 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 09:20:55 AM
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Irregardless of the venue, it's the person responsible for the sound mix. If it's a bigger venue that has a house system with a sound man, then it's that sound man's responsibility to ensure that the sound you want is being recreated and heard. If it's a small venue and it's just you, then the responsibility is yours. Remember, the best equipment doesn't necessarily equate to the best sound because if the person running it doesn't know what they're doing then the sound quality will suffer. Now, if it's strictly an "unplugged" gig then that's when I think the quality of an acoustic instrument will be the deciding factor...
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Art
SF Bay Area, CA / Mililani, HI
"The real music comes from within you - not from the instrument" |
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Lawrence
Ha`aha`a
USA
1597 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 10:25:32 AM
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D.I., DI Box or just (DI) means "Direct Interface".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DI_unit
It is a box that you plug your instrument pickup into (instead of, or along with, an amp). DI boxes usually convert the instrument levels and impedances to match standard balanced microphone signals which are then fed to the house mixer through the a multi wire "snake" and into the mic inputs on the mixer. This is the standard arrangement, but there are variations.
quote:
Not sure I'd agree on that one. A good external mic coupled with a good front of house engineer is far and away the best way to reproduce the sound of your guitar on stage.
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Yes... No doubt about it, except for the feedback issue (or unless the sound "idiot" uses a poor quality mic or a cardioid too close or points the mic at the sound hole, all of which I see happen all the time). Your suggestion is a very nice way to help with feedback problems when using an external mic (i.e.: feeding the monitors from pickup only - through the D.I.)! But of course that reinforces the evidence regarding feedback with stage mics. They are far more likely to feedback than most any of the pickup systems.
Internal mics can sound mediocre but they generally receive a much larger signal than external mics and they are also shielded from external sounds (like from the monitors), so they are less likely to feedback. The rankings I was giving are from a tendency to feed back perspective and general quality of tone for pickups only (including the internal mic class of "pickup"). Steve Grimes put a Baggs blender with the internal Mic into my Hapa model precisely because he thought it sounded better than other pickup systems, not because it was better that a very good external mic in a very good acoustic space.
I interpreted the question as one about how pickups sound in terms of tone production, versus the guitar itself, which is not the same question as how to get the best overall tone in performance.
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Mahope Kākou...
...El Lorenzo de Ondas Sonoras |
Edited by - Lawrence on 10/23/2007 10:41:25 AM |
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Fran Guidry
Ha`aha`a
USA
1579 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 10:35:43 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Podagee57
DI?
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I understand DI to mean "direct input" but regardless of the meaning of the abbreviation, this is a device which converts an unbalanced signal to a balanced signal. Here's the scoop:
On a professional PA system, the inputs are balanced low impedance. This format allows for long cable runs with minimal noise interference and minimal sound degradation.
The output of our guitar pickups and most of our electronic gadgets like keyboards or effects boxes are unbalanced. Our guitars are high impedance, our keyboard is probably low impedance, but both are unbalanced. As a result, a cable long enough to reach the back of the room where the mixer should be will likely murder the signal.
It is also the case that on some systems the board might not include inputs for unbalanced connections.
So we use a DI. We plug our unbalanced 1/4" plug into the DI, and we plug a balanced XLR into the other connector, the box makes the necessary conversion. The DI will often have a selector switch to optimize for our guitar or keyboard, but it's not absolutely necessary.
DIs can be passive, requiring no power, if they perform their function with a transformer. Or they can be active, getting power either from a battery or the phantom power supplied by the PA.
In the acoustic guitar/pickup world, we have a number of special purpose DIs that include EQ, gain and volume control, effects loops, blending functions, a whole spectrum of features. These include devices like the Baggs ParaAcoustic DI or PADI and a number of others.
Hey, nothing, absolutely nothing, is simple <grin>.
Fran
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E ho`okani pila kakou ma Kaleponi
Slack Key Guitar in California - www.kaleponi.com
Slack Key on YouTube
Homebrewed Music Blog |
Edited by - Fran Guidry on 10/23/2007 10:39:36 AM |
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Mark
Ha`aha`a
USA
1628 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 1:04:30 PM
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Actually, DI stands for either "direct insertion" or "direct injection" according to the Old Guys Dictionery of Studio Jargon. 
Mark "TeaBoy" Nelson |
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Lawrence
Ha`aha`a
USA
1597 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 1:18:08 PM
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quote:
Actually, DI stands for either "direct insertion" or "direct injection" according to the Old Guys Dictionery of Studio Jargon.
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This "controversy" is already covered by the wikipedia link above, unless you did not click it cause you are one lazy "old guy". I prefer "Direct Interface" (and I am older than you are!!, plus I don't remember what we called em way-back-when... don't think they were invented yet.. you know, we did all our recording by using chisels on stone tablets) 
"Injection" is to "medical" sounding and there are already "insert" jacks on mixing consoles which are NOT normally connected to DI boxes so that would tend toward unnecessary confusion.
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Mahope Kākou...
...El Lorenzo de Ondas Sonoras |
Edited by - Lawrence on 10/23/2007 5:31:56 PM |
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rendesvous1840
Ha`aha`a
USA
1055 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 4:33:32 PM
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The coffee shop by us used to have a wednesday open mike hosted by C, and a friday jam hosted by D. D always played at the open mike as well. I played at both, also. I noticed that my guitar sounded terrible on wednesdays, but fine on fridays. Same venue, same guitar, my same hands, so I asked D about it. He said C set all the levels completely flat when he turned on the PA, and left them there. The sound person is a vital link, as Mark and Artsap have pointed out.
Now, Lawrence,tell me more about this mike-too-close-to soundhole- stuff. I use a mini condenser mike that clips to the sound hole. I have had trouble with feedback, especially with monitors.
Paul |
"A master banjo player isn't the person who can pick the most notes.It's the person who can touch the most hearts." Patrick Costello |
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Lawrence
Ha`aha`a
USA
1597 Posts |
Posted - 10/23/2007 : 5:12:34 PM
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quote:
Now, Lawrence,tell me more about this mike-too-close-to soundhole- stuff. I use a mini condenser mike that clips to the sound hole. I have had trouble with feedback, especially with monitors.
Mark could tell you as well, but the sound hole (or holes) turn the box of your guitar into a thing sometimes called a "Hemholtz Resonator", Bass-Reflex loudspeakers work the same way, or even the Jug in a Jug-Band. The air vibrations in and out of the box will resonate and become amplified at a frequency determined by the size of the hole (or total size of the multiple holes) and the size of the box, and it can be a broad range that gets amplified. For guitars this frequency is usually designed to be just below where the bass volume of the top begins to fall off so it gives the the instrument some extra bass extension. Now, since it is Bass frequencies that are pouring out of the hole, guess what happens when you put a mic in front of it (you get way too much bass). It is a little different situation if the mic is actually inside the body. Depending on exactly where the mic is placed it may see higher or lower bass sound pressure. My on-board guitar mic is well inside the hole to avoid the pressure increase.
If you want more feedback immunity then you should consider a pickup that sits "closer to the energy" from the strings (like I mention above), or maybe a blender system so you can still get some of the on-board mike sound.
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Mahope Kākou...
...El Lorenzo de Ondas Sonoras |
Edited by - Lawrence on 10/23/2007 5:29:30 PM |
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rendesvous1840
Ha`aha`a
USA
1055 Posts |
Posted - 10/24/2007 : 11:50:49 AM
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Mahalo for the info. I think I'll try placing the mic inside first as it has a second clip with it. Might as well explore all the possibilities. I've gone nuts playing with speaker and monitor placement. I didn't try inside the guitar because I thought it would be like putting your hand over the vocal muc. Now THAT is a tactical error!
Paul |
"A master banjo player isn't the person who can pick the most notes.It's the person who can touch the most hearts." Patrick Costello |
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Podagee57
Lokahi
USA
280 Posts |
Posted - 10/25/2007 : 08:09:37 AM
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| thanks all for the DI clarification. You guys sure know your stuff! |
What? You mean high "E" is the TOP string. No way dude! That changes everything! |
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