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Does your axe need an amp to sound good or can it make a good tone acoustically? Here's mine au natural...
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07-16-2015 12:01 PM
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I have a 2014 Peerless Cremona that I actually prefer to play unplugged. Thanks to the acoustics in my house it really resonates thru out. The sound is very balanced across the range. How it sounds unplugged is key when I look at hollow bodies.
Sorry, no sound clip, I am not suitable for prime time.
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I often practise with my 175 unplugged just for convenience. It doesn't sound that great acoustically, but a while back I recorded this as a bit of an experiment:
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Herb Ellis said he liked laminates because they didn't have much acoustic sound; he thought it was bad for an electric guitar to have a strong acoustic sound because that would clash with the sound from the amp
I play unplugged most of the time. For good or ill, I'm used to that sound (-for practicing, anyway).
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I was just going to post almost the exact same thing.
Originally Posted by grahambop
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My main practice guitar lately has been a Heritage Sweet 16 with a floater .... it has a nice load acoustic sound
I would spend more time with my L5WES or my Le Grand, they also have great acoustic tone and volume ....
but I have a 6 month old puppy and a couple of other young dogs that get curious and too rambunctious to have a super expensive guitar lying around while they are sniffing, scratching and rough housing in the general area ....
my Sweet 16 has already been banged around a bit on gigs all over Tucson
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I practice my Eastman 905-7 and Peerless Imperial both acoustically and with a bit of amplification, but they project quite well (both carved). My laminate Ibanez AFJ957 is loud enough to play acoustically for practicing, but I generally do plug it into a 10 watt SS bass amp as it's just right there next to the couch. OTOH, my 5th Avenue Acoustic is a laminate but has plenty of volume for playing. Odd about that. Perhaps it's because there isn't a bunch of pickups, switches and tone knobs all over the top adding to the stiffness. I have a Greg Bennett JZ-3 that is so heavy and coated in epoxy that it has almost no acoustic sound; it must be plugged in. But, it was a very inexpensive archtop.
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. That actually cops that selmer mcaffee vibe pretty nicely. Nice playing too! Originally Posted by grahambop
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I have a Eastman AR-810 (no cut-away) with a floating handmade KA single coil suitable for bronze strings. The guitar is strung with acoustic bronze strings.
I use it 90% of the time without any amplification, It is loud with a great acoustic tone and more than enough sustain. It is a 2006 guitar, at that time it was still possible to have thinner top with parallel brace. My only regret is hat I did not ask for the parallel braced thinner top. I think that he would give the guitar more volume and bite at the expense of sustain but this is my personal taste.
I think that I prefer the acoustic tone. Or the combination of the acoustic and pick-up tone combined.
Daniel
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I prefer to practice without an amp and try to use that sound as a guide for when playing with people and using an amp.
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Thanks! It certainly came out sounding better than I expected. There's not a lot of volume really, I had to play quite close to the mic. Originally Posted by Mark Kleinhaut
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Yes I think there are 2 sides to this. Over the years I have mainly practised unplugged, and I reckon this has helped me develop a bigger sound. It just forces you to find a way to get the most tone out of an instrument that is not really designed for pure acoustic playing (in the case of my 175 anyway). On the other hand, when I use the amp, it sometimes takes a while to really get the optimum sound out of it. There seem to be some really subtle adjustments of picking and left hand touch that gradually 'work' the amp to get more tone. It's more intuitive than anything, I couldn't really say what I'm changing. Originally Posted by Pat Clare
So I think in my case, there are benefits from playing without the amp quite a lot, but also from adding the amp into the equation and somehow building that in. Difficult to explain what I mean really.
I ought to do more amp practice these days, I've probably done enough unplugged!
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My Benedetto sounds great unplugged but I play plugged in nowadays. I have to know how to control all that sound that starts when you plug in and everything gets.... amplified/picked up. It forces you to play cleaner IMO.
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The amp is part of the instrument to me, so I try to practice with it more often than not. With a laminate, sure but even with a carved guitar with a floater. I love the acoustic sound of the guitar but once you throw a pickup and amp into the equation I might sound like crap amplified even if my guitar sounds great acoustically.
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I completely agree that the amp becomes part of the musical instrument system and its essential that we practice getting our sound with this complete system. The challenge is that when practicing not at home, at living room or practice room volume, the amp behaves completely differently then when you turn it up on the gig. So, the only real experience that you can get developing your bandstand sound is, well, on the band stand. This, of course, gets even more complex because the guitar/amp system sounds different from one stage to another and even depending on what instrumentation and particular players your working with. What you want is "your" sound every time, any stage, any volume, with any group. That's a tall hill we're all climbing, tall hill
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Mark, thank you for staring this thread and sharing your gorgeous guitar and wonderful playing! Though I've never played one, I'm a big fan of the Halfling and really appreciated the opportunity to hear yours completely acoustically. It sounds wonderful - at times the mids and highs sound so warm and creamy that you could easily convince me that it was indeed amplified. Very nice!
I play my archtop acoustically 95% of the time. I do have a pickup mounted for those odd times when I want to (or even more rarely, need to) plug in, but my first and true love is the acoustic tone of archtops. Unfortunately, I don't have any good recordings, and they would certainly pale in comparison to yours, but once again thank you for taking the time to share this!
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To top it off, most players set their personal sonic goal based on "the sound xxx got on the yyy record, man." As a skilled producer you know that's another impossibility -- that yyy sound literally never existed in real time even in the studio. It's a product of what came out of the amp, fed into a particular mic sitting impossibly close to a particular point on the speaker, processed in myriad ways. Originally Posted by Mark Kleinhaut
The challenge is that . . . the amp behaves completely differently then when you turn it up on the gig. . . . This, of course, gets even more complex because the guitar/amp system sounds different from one stage to another and even depending on what instrumentation and particular players your working with. What you want is "your" sound every time, any stage, any volume, with any group. That's a tall hill we're all climbing, tall hill
It's fundamentally beyond our control. Mostly, all we can do is shrug and say, "That sounded ok to me. What do you think?"
Too much metaphysics! We now return you to, "All of You: E maj7 or F-7b5 For the First Chord?"
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hey Sam, how are ya man Originally Posted by Sam Sherry
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Wise man, Herb Ellis. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Herb is wise, no matter how wrong he was Originally Posted by SamBooka
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Thanks for the complements back drifter, much appreciated! Originally Posted by backdrifter
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I play my archtop unplugged most of the time when practicing. There was a long stretch when I was struggling to get an amplified sound I liked (since the sound in my head was basically an ES-175 and I own a carvetop with floater, it took a long negotiation between me and my equipment to get a sound I dug). Now that I've got that settled, I rarely plug the archtop in when practicing. My guitar has a really nice acoustic sound and I live sitting on my front porch and playing acoustically in the evenings after work.
Since putting my jazz Tele together, I have been plugging in on a daily basis to practice and get the sound dialed in. If you have a solidbody guitar you pretty much need to plug in to practice.
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I practice on my fully acoustic archtops with floaters or my Gypsy guitars. My archtops with built in pickups and solid bodies need to be plugged in to sound right, with one exception, my Ibanez AF-207 7 string. For some reason this laminated archtop with a built in pickup has a great acoustic sound. Go figure...
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Mark, I've told you this already in the past but you can put strings on a pile of dog poop and make it sound good. Originally Posted by Mark Kleinhaut
Your Halfling is one of the best sounding archtops I've personally ever played. One day I'll own one. Unfortunately, I never played on plugged in. It has such a unique natural sound, I don't think you can make it sound better plugged in. It really is that good.
Joe D
By the way I play all my archtops acoustically 30% of the time. They all sound terrific. My L7c is the deepest and my Heritage Johnny Smith sings. This new L5 Wes that I got from Patrick has a beautiful acoustic tone. They are all much different acoustically than they are plugged in (if that makes any sense)..Last edited by Max405; 07-17-2015 at 05:47 PM.
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I play my Godin 5th Avenues unplugged a lot because they have great acoustic properties, even though they are laminated.
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