Acoustic buying advice needed

[Vice1]

Does anyone have an opinion on the most "durable" acoustic guitar. I travel alot and would be willing to sacrafice sound for dubality. Any Suggestions?

[Treeline]

What's your budget? You may find a good match in the Guild / Washburn / Tacoma lines. And if the problem is beating the guitar during airline handling,the problem isn't likely to be the guitar, but the case. Here's where you can be a few miles ahead by dumping some cash on a top line case - like $300 or $400 or so - Calton etc. You can drop them off a truck and they stay together.

[Dougster]

I've got an old customized, refretted Martin D-35 I love. Bought it two years ago (really I don't see any need to buy one new when the old ones age so well and cost less). Trouble is, while it sounds great at home, plugged in with a Martin goldline pickup I had installed, it's just shrill. A $500 Takamine would beat it to death. So maybe have two guitars, one for home and one for plugged? But I want that home sound I get when I plug in, so should I look for a better pickup or preamp or what?

[Treeline]

Yup. I'm back. The wordy one.

Sounds like one or both of two problems.

1. The undersaddle pickup is not seated well in the saddle and doesn't pick up lower frequencies to the best of its ability. Make sure the bottom of the saddle is dead flat, and the pickup ribbon is seated comfortably tight. You can also make a soft string louder with a little piece of paper over that area of the pickup (and I mean Little) and under the saddle - a shim - but that will not fix a major problem with the sound.

2. Even if it is well seated, you have a piezo crystal with a signature sound and it has inherent limitations as a pickup. It simply can't deliver the *gorgeous* sound you have probably gotten used to with the D-35. In fact, I hate you... I want that guitar... No, just kidding. Your guitar produces an unusually complex sound; D-35s are like that. Like 1960s Alfas. Go like hell; bitch to keep running.

Maybe two solutions.

1. Shop around for a DI box ("Direct Inject" , "Damn Interesting", or Do you take vIsa" - something like that) to plug into between you and the amplifier or recorder. Lots on the market, for any budget. You will get what you pay for here. A really nice tone comes from an expensive box called the Demeter. And Behringer has one for a little less than a hundred bucks. A tried and true medium is a Fishman blender, but prepare to pay something for these.

They are set to EQ and otherwise fool with a piezo signal; they anticipate a raw sounding high impedance quacky thing and temper it to sound much more acoustic. Gets rid of the quack that you're hearing. They work.

2. Consider augmenting or replacing the system you have with a dual source system. Augment first; the thinline (or goldline) is a very respectable unit already. But a dual source system creates two signals of different characteristics that can be blended in a mix. One signal will be from an internal condenser mic. Placement within the guitar body will affect the sound of that signal tremendously. That means you can tailor the signal in many subtle ways (you will also get good at changing strings). Many of these on the market and a variety of installation theories available, including clamps to internal braces that are completely non-invasive. They usually (but not always) involve an internal preamp and pump out a stereo signal through an endpin jack.

Fishman is everywhere with these, but there are others, and good ones. Martin has a setup; L.R. Baggs; B-Band, etc. Some of these use outboard preamps that allow you to tailor the signal more, have notch filters to combat feedback, etc. Hard to try these out without buying, but perhaps you can hear them in other guitars of similar style to get a feel of the sound.

Retrofitting guitars can be pretty expensive. You can lose easily five hundred bucks in an afternoon, which is why I usually suggest to people that they consider trading their instrument for one that is already set up. But in your case, D-35s don't grow in trees (well, I suppose they did once), and you may find it worth the expense and hassle to do it right.

And, one more thing not to forget. You're in the same price range here as a couple of Octava condenser mics - a stereo pair, in fact (Only From The Sound Room, of course!!). Or Sure, or Sennheiser, etc. Do some searches in the microphone section; lots and lots of info there.

Depending on your intended use, you might actually get more bang for the buck buying a matched pair of recording condenser mics, learn how to use them (means sitting still when you play, among other things) and then having ultimately a far better setup in the long run. And with the D-35, that may be the only true path to an authentic sound. Just a thought...


[This message has been edited by Treeline (edited 06-05-2000).]

[windowman]

Hummm;

I'm not as hip on the Taylor as I once was. They just don't sound nearly as good to me as they did a few years ago before they started making their tops thicker. I guess I've got an old time mentality going about paying a thousand or bucks for a guitar with a bolt-on neck too, but that's probably a mentality that's due to old age :-)

I have to say that the Alvarez Yairi models are currently the best sounding/playing/made guitars in existence. The DY 71 is a fingerpicker's wonder axe. You can get them at under $1500 and they're in my humble opinion, better than those $3000 dollar Martins any day! The only guitar that comes close to the Yairi is Louden but then you're up in the $2500 price range, and I don't think it's a better guitar, but probably is as good.

Now, if you can find an OLDER Taylor...they still made the only guitar with a cut-away that ever sounded good to me--the Concert Grand. Boy, that was a great guitar. They sound like a crappy old blues guitar now though, thanks to those thicker tops. They just don't have the vibrations they use to.

As for pick-ups--do yourself a favor and spend a couple of hundred for a Sunrise. They're still the best acoustic pick-up made although Baggs comes close and is maybe even a little better depending on what kind of sound you like.

[Dougster]

Sunrise? Don't know that one. Is it a piezo? I think my problem is I don't like the piezo sound. Going a good DI box with eq may be the easiest way--I don't want it to record, but for playing live and jamming with friends.
Thanks for help,
Dougster, crappy old blues guy

[windowman]

I'm with you Doug; piezo's just sound thin and brittle, and after all these years of making them, they still don't sound much better. The Sunrise Pick-up System is made by Jim Kaufman, (this is the same guy who won the Winfield Flatpick Guitar Championships so many times). It's a magnetic pick-up the mounts in the soundhole and sounds breathtaking. Everyone from Phil Keaggy to Leo Kottke to Michel Hedges and James Taylor uses this system. They're hard to find in stores and generally have to be mail-ordered direct from Jim. The pick-up itself is around $170, but you really need one of his buffer boxes too, in order to boost the signal and cut down on noise. It's about another $100 or so. He also makes a tube interface (buffer) for about $1200 that Kottke swears by, but it's a little pricey for me.

You put that through a Boss AD-5 Acoustic Instrument Processor (around $350) and go through your PA system, and it's like seeing God!!!

Some guys also run a piezo under the saddle and combine the two signals. Keaggy used to run both of those for his on stage monitoring and also ran a Fender M-1 mini mic mounted internaly. He used a 9 pin din-jack to handle all three signals. The mic signal went to the house PA while the Sunrise and piezo went to his stage rig (basically a mini PA system).

I hear that lately he's also been trying a Baggs system which also is very good.

[Dougster]

You got me thinking Windowman. There's a guitar shop around the block from me that was encouraging me to buy a pickup like you describe. I think it's the same one. The guy talked about Leo Kottke using it. I think I'll mosey over there and check it out more tomorrow. It sounds like I could get the pickup and preamp now and the next deal later. Thanks
Doug