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The over complication situation far more commonly arises on gigs with ‘acoustic’ guitar
Now, that’s a realm of alchemy and witchcraft. Most things sound bad, and anything that sounds good feeds back.
The search for the philosophers stone continues.
Electric is easy. But then electric players get picky haha
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07-14-2026 02:48 PM
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What works best for me with an acoustic guitar (Classical or Gypsy guitar) is an acoustic amp (these days I use a Blu 6), a piezo pickup and a preamp (I use a Baggs para acoustic DI). For my acoustic archtops, I use a magnetic pickup into either an acoustic amp or an electric guitar amp.
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
No alchemy or witchcraft, just a hell of a lot of trial and error.
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But can you get it to sound good? Anywhere in the realm of an actual acoustic guitar. Piezo always sounds bad to me. Like a banjo, but thinner.
Even Paul McCartney’s acoustic guitar sounds bad live. If anyone can afford a good tech, it’s him.
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It’s fine, I guess. I use a Baggs and a Aer. I think it’s as good as it gets with that type of set up. The parametric EQ is invaluable for dialling in something usable. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
When I’m feeling polite I call it ‘a giggable sound.’
The nylon piezo sound is kind of its own thing. It doesn’t sound like an acoustic guitar at all really but we are socially conditioned to accept it as such. “Stick a bunch of reverb on it babes, don’t worry about it.”
Which of course doesn’t really sound like an acoustic archtop….For my acoustic archtops, I use a magnetic pickup into either an acoustic amp or an electric guitar amp.
I’m using a Tonedexter again at the moment. It’s… better. It’s still … a little bit weird. And it’s frankly not as useful in some ways as the Baggs in terms of its EQ and so on. And apparently I need to use a solo boost live too, which I don’t need to do acoustic. I’m at peace with it. The Baggs Para DI doesn’t have that sadly - though the bigger units do.No alchemy or witchcraft, just a hell of a lot of trial and error.
(I wonder if Molly Tuttle is still using one?)
And then there’s the vagaries of phase.
Them there DPAs sound great, but you have everyone in the band wanting to murder you at sound check, and rightly so.
Even if you sort out the feedback, any situation with on stage monitoring can get very weird. I play in a GJ band with two instruments on mics and it is a bit of nightmare at our local pub gig. Things just come back through the mics from the monitors. Urgh.
So I respect your pragmatic choices. The lav mic brigade can do one.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 07-14-2026 at 05:25 PM.
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IR/Tonedexter technology aside it’s a sliding scale from ‘plastic duck’ to ‘actually sounds like a guitar’ against ‘you can play with other people’ and ‘works most of the time in a quiet theatre solo gig’ Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I mean this guy has a lovely acoustic guitar sound but apparently he can’t use it in a band. Hey ho.
The other problem is that however bad the situation is for steel and nylon players, gear companies have spent infinitely more time and money working on the problem for those guys than they have for acoustic jazz guitars.
The solution maybe out there, but after a while you just sort of run out of money - and the bandleader’s patience - looking for it.
Stringswingers setups sound consistent and good enough - and actually that’s probably more important. It’s probably good just to do that.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 07-14-2026 at 05:35 PM.
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Specifically with GJ guitars it’s quite easy to get a good sound for piezo rhythm, but much harder to get a good piezo sound for lead Originally Posted by AllanAllen
A lot of bands I’ve seen out of Paris have a dedicated rhythm guitarist who plays a sel Mac with a piezo (a Bigtone?) and the lead guitar plays a magnetic pickup - either a floating pickup Di Mauro or something, or a Stimer on a D hole (the classic electric Django set up).
(Or hey, a Yamaha superstrat when it’s Bireli lol.)
Tonally that ends up being quite similar to an amped jazz box.
Gear wise that’s all quite sensible. Guitar, pickup (preamp?) amp.
Doesn’t really help for my situation (playing with accordion, fiddle and bass) but it’s easy to see why they do it.
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OTOH you could get a nice electric guitar, and a nice amp, and plug one into the other.
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Thought Molly Tuttle was using a magnetic pickup? Mag pickups don't play so well with ToneDexters.
I like the sound of a Sunrise mag pickup. They are cumbersome and expensive and the newer stuff I haven't tried yet may sound better. But paired with a really good pre-amp (I'm using a Grace Designs Felix which is the single best piece of musical electronic gear ever created) it sounds good. Not great. Not true acoustic. But good.
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I use an ME70 because it has no menus and no scrolling. I agree with your approach. Originally Posted by John A.
That said, the more elaborate gear can be seductive. When I needed to amplify vocals, I first got a Bose S1. But, it was limited on EQ. Two bands and some questionably useful presets. So, I went to the JBL Eon One Compact. All kinds of EQ flexibility -- and that has come in handy.
Contains a full featured mixer. My preference is an old fashioned knobby mixer, but my 19 lb powered speaker has a full featured backup mixer in case I need it. Redundancy: Good, no? Sure, most of the features are only accessible by bluetooth phone-app, but at least they're there, right?
So, the first gig failure I had was when I didn't realize that there was some chorus on the channel I was using. I could hear distortion, but I didn't hear that it was chorus. The chorus controls are buried deep enough in the app to remind me of an archeological dig. Not just a submenu, but a careful scroll to find it. That wasn't bad at home, later, but was a major pita on the gig. So, a feature I didn't need or want was lurking there, waiting for its chance to pounce.
Yesterday, it was something new. Once again, plenty of operator error. I got to big band and realized that I didn't have the power cord for the JBL. Not a problem. I had one in my car. But, I didn't bother to get it, since I figured I had 12 hours of battery life (or maybe 8) for a two hour session. I'd had it plugged in at home, so it had to be charged, right?
Midway, it died. I'm not 100% sure why, but I got the cable and plugged it in and it worked. So, maybe the battery was dead? First time I realized that there was a battery life indicator. I'd never seen it anywhere but full-up. Maybe it's defective. After an hour of charging it was full up (I didn't notice it earlier) -- which is too quick.
Right now, I've been running it on battery for several hours (to test the indicator) and it's still full-up.
EDIT: After about 5 hours, the battery indicator was full up, which made no sense. I then plugged it into power. The battery indicator then dimmed at the top (first fifth) and pulsed upward toward the top. So, at that point, the indicator seemed to be showing me what I needed to know, that it was 20% down and charging. That is, in order to figure out how much charge was left on the battery, I needed the power cable. Seems to me I must be missing something.
So, I have a battery powered speaker, but I can't tell if it's fully charged or not.
The app should know, I imagine, but it didn't warn me yesterday. The only battery icon is on the setup screen and doesn't seem to change.
Eventually, I'll call JBL if I need to and figure out what's wrong. There may be a way to do this, but it's not intuitive.
I'm not really worried about that. I'm only posting to make the point that the features are seductive and a little sneaky.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 07-14-2026 at 08:59 PM.
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If anyone comes up with a better acoustic guitar setup for a typical noisy gig, let me know. What I am doing works in the real world of a gigging pro jazz guitarist, and that is what is important. At least to me. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I use the Baggs a lot, it has a nice phase switch too which is worth trying. I've had good results with K&K piezos. I mount them inside on the top under the bridge area using super glue gel. Very loud full tone, the Baggs is for fine tuning and feedback reduction then. Good results from acoustic archtops to flatops. More natural sound than most under saddle bridge pickups as you are getting more of the top tone in there.
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Which is what I said. But it's always a compromise sonically. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
I think the Tonedexter is quite good FWIW. It fattens out and enriches the sound while everything still works the way it would through a conventional preamp. It's up to you how much of that you mix into the basic piezo signal.
I just wish it had a better EQ. There can also be a slightly 'artificial' quality to it. I haven't tried the Tonedexter II.Last edited by Christian Miller; 07-15-2026 at 04:58 AM.
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Yeah my info is a few years out of date, so as I suspected she might have pivoted to something else. Because of course she did. She plays acoustic. Originally Posted by Spook410
But that is how you end up with these kind of convoluted high tech rigs for acoustic guitar and shelves of preamps and gadgets... Just to get something workable that you don't hate too much.
Whereas we all know that if you plug a Gibson 335 or a 175 or whatever into a Fender amp, it's gonna sound good if you can play. (You might have rooms full o gear anyway, but that's for other reasons.) Now you might need something more portable, or you might want to add effects etc, but that baseline always works.
Trust me, I spent a decade of my best years HATING my live sound because I was always on acoustic. And I was playing 200 shows a year lol. Playing my 335 is such a wonderful relief.
I quite like a mag pup through the LR Baggs Para DI btw. Shouldn't work, but I get quite a good acoustic archtop sound that way.
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I'm waiting until someone invents a pedal that 'Truly' sounds like an authentic acoustic guitar when any solid body electric guitar is plugged into it.
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Well the pedals aren't there really aren't so bad if you are playing normie rhythm guitar. They do that specific job pretty well. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
I'm waiting until someone invents a pedal that 'Truly' sounds like an authentic acoustic guitar when any solid body electric guitar is plugged into it.
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For what it's worth, I think the K&K system sounds better than a piezo. There's one in my Eastman, and I use it for big band gigs. I'm also slowly gathering the courage to give the Eastman an snakebite and a DeArmond Rhythm Chief. So, the K&K is better than a piezo, but still not good. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
You know, I just realized this acoustic archtop was supposed to free me from gear...
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The K&K is a Piezo pickup. One of the best in fact. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I don't like Piezo pickups with acoustic archtops. I prefer a magnetic pickup like a Dearmond or a Kent Armstrong floating humbucker. As Christian pointed out, the magnetic pickup does turn it into an electric guitar more or less, but with an archtop, I prefer that sound. IMO, an acoustic archtop with a piezo sounds a bit too banjo like.
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I thought that the K&K is for flat tops. There’s no bridge plate on an archtop. Where did you put the transducers? Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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I have seen guys put the piezo transducers of the K$K under the bridge (outside of the guitar) on an archtop. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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This question does come up, I found the best sound on the inside of the top under the bridge foot areas mounting with super glue gel which K&K recommends as a adhesive for full tone and volume. I use 2 pickups, one on the treble, one on the bass sides. They suggest placing the pickups just inside the F holes but that gets you more of a banjo tone
On flattops with or without a bridge plate I do the same thing with great results
They size pickups for all different kinds of instruments, I also use them on 5 string cellos, banjos, what ever didn't hide fast enough if I need to plug it in.
The banjo twin is very natural sounding.
They do have systems for under footing bridge mounting butI found things like the Big Twin inside for archtops sound better.
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To some people extensive functionality is appealing, and I definitely know people who enjoy getting things just right by tweaking settings, storing perfect presets for different songs, etc. But just as a matter of personality/psychology, I can't deal with that stuff. That comes at the expense of some compromises in sound, but I've made my peace with that. As an example, I have a Fender Champion 20 amp (for grab and go situations), which is a digital modeling amp that can't store presets. It's just knobs and WYSIWG. The Fender Mustang amp is basically the same thing, but with more effects and the ability to save presets. I've tried it a few times, and it drove me nuts (not a long distance to travel in general). Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
The one major drawback with the C20 is that it indicates which amp model it's set to by an LED that changes from red to amber to green as you turn the model knob (rather than by having indicator markings on the panel), and I have red-green-brown colorblindness! So I (literally) put a blob of Wite-Out on the front panel of to mark the spot for the main setting I use.
Again, I go simpler than that. I have a TC Helicon VoiceSolo, which does everything I need it do, and nothing more. They don't make them anymore, and if it ever dies I'm going to pretty bummed out. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
[snip tails of equipment woe]
Exactly. In general, I may not be the most self-aware person, but if there's one thing I know about myself it's that I can screw up settings on pretty much anything, so it's best not to have a lot of settings. I'm lucky that my needs are pretty minimal in the first place and that I'm generally happy with the sounds I can get from just a guitar amp. Once in a while I experiment a little, e.g., I do have pedalboard and will try different combinations of effects with it, but mostly it's more trouble than it's worth. Again, that's more a matter of my own eccentricities than the gear. I'm lucky I don't do gigs that require more involved set-ups. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
I completely get that and agree. Your coping strategy is to actually cope, which is admirable. Mine is to say "screw this". Yours is probably better in the long run. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Yes! Perfect is the enemy of good. Originally Posted by John A.
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Stop saying things like this. You're scaring the horses. Originally Posted by Spook410
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They have a Pure Archtop system. It's glued inside the guitar, kind of under the bridge. I thought it was a mic, not a piezo. I thought those were the skinny little ribbon that goes under the plastic bridge on a flat top. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
Knowing mine is a piezo does not change my opnion that piezo's stink.
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Dampening a carved top for thunk I think
Today, 04:49 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos