Acoustic / Electric

[Breandan]

Digitech makes an acoustic emulator pedal for use with an electric... why not bring it onboard?

Any thoughts on if a electric/acoustic (acoustic and electric pups) is feasible?

[Dean]

If I read your question right, yes you can have ele pups on a acoustic.....but ,most acoustics use pups designed for them.

[Mattia]

Rick Turner for one feels the best amplified acoustic tone can be had from a solid body guitar with appropriate piezo and post-processing. See the D-Tar mamma bear pre system or Fishmann's Aura system. I don't see a benefit to bringing this kind of thing on-board - better have it as a pedal to free up your hands and allow use with several instruments.

[Breandan]

Rick Turner for one feels the best amplified acoustic tone can be had from a solid body guitar with appropriate piezo and post-processing. See the D-Tar mamma bear pre system or Fishmann's Aura system. I don't see a benefit to bringing this kind of thing on-board - better have it as a pedal to free up your hands and allow use with several instruments.

Turner is a lot of the "inspiration" for this... Why not free up instruments and pedals? Guitar with one (or two) parallel wired humbuckers or pafs and a Fishmann style acoustic pup.

[Abraxas]

Rick Turner for one feels the best amplified acoustic tone can be had from a solid body guitar with appropriate piezo and post-processing. See the D-Tar mamma bear pre system or Fishmann's Aura system. I don't see a benefit to bringing this kind of thing on-board - better have it as a pedal to free up your hands and allow use with several instruments.

Awesome idea... Looked it up on YouTube, and I like the results. [media=]

[dpm99]

There are a lot of production hybrids on the market with both acoustic and electric pickups. Look at some of these:

Taylor T5

Tom Anderson Crowdster Plus

Ovation VXT

Ibanez Montage

Michael Kelly Hybrid

Hamer Duotone Custom

One of the big issues to cover is strings. Bronze wound strings contribute to the acoustic tone, but electric (magnetic) pickups have a hard time with them. Most people go with electric strings, for that reason. However, DR produces strings they call Zebras, which are built for hybrids, and in my opinion are the best compromise available.

Hope that helps!

Oh, and as far as bringing an acoustic simulator on board, it would work, but why not just go with a synth guitar if you're gonna do all that?

[Breandan]

There are a lot of production hybrids on the market with both acoustic and electric pickups. Look at some of these:

Taylor T5

Tom Anderson Crowdster Plus

Ovation VXT

Ibanez Montage

Michael Kelly Hybrid

Hamer Duotone Custom

One of the big issues to cover is strings. Bronze wound strings contribute to the acoustic tone, but electric (magnetic) pickups have a hard time with them. Most people go with electric strings, for that reason. However, DR produces strings they call Zebras, which are built for hybrids, and in my opinion are the best compromise available.

Hope that helps!

Oh, and as far as bringing an acoustic simulator on board, it would work, but why not just go with a synth guitar if you're gonna do all that?

Thanks a ton David. I wasn't thinking thinking of an onboard simulator- just wiring it up with a standard 5 position selector and alternate between electric acoustic and electric. I merely mentioned the simulator for comparison: my apologies for any confusion.

[psw]

Building pedals into a guitar is nearly always a bad thing...

Also, don't confuse 'piezo' with 'acoustic', it is more acoustic like certainly...

The simulators are getting better but the quality of the sound is very much dependent on amplification and the type of guitar, pickups and style of play and setting the pedal appropriately.

Mixing Mag pups and piezos can often be problematic due to impedance mismatches, you will need buffers and such.

My latest guitar project has both mag and piezo and several different kinds of stereo and blend effects (as well as on board tuner and 4 band eq for the piezo)...

But I have tried out and have perhaps the cheapest ($40 new) Behringer version the AM100 (effectively a Boss AC2 clone) and it can sound quite good. Things are improving and many multi effects pedals also include such things, I found I had a few. They are not quite 'acoustic' but some can sound better than a bad piezo system. I use it occassionally to make my acoustic with soundhole mag pickup sound a bit more 'acoustic'.

The behringer does have several cool features though. It has two outputs so one can run stereo or multi amps, so can be a good splitter. It also has 4 sim types and other controls, I tend to favour the 'large' setting for my guitars. Looking for some kind of YT demo, they were all pretty bad and poorly represents what the things are capable of...

I found this audio that is more impressive though...but unlike many, he clearly knows how to use it!

http://www.juzp.net/Lpw2d_QOealRq

But there are other options too, many...and more all the time.

For most, these things may well sound as good or better in an electric guitar than the expense and work of a piezo, more options and as a pedal, can be added to any guitar.

If however, either piezo or modeller, you run HB pickups say and into a conventional guitar rig set for a good electric sound and think at a push of a button or change to piezo you are going to get a gret sound, you will likely be pretty disappointed.

[Breandan]

Building pedals into a guitar is nearly always a bad thing...

Also, don't confuse 'piezo' with 'acoustic', it is more acoustic like certainly...

The simulators are getting better but the quality of the sound is very much dependent on amplification and the type of guitar, pickups and style of play and setting the pedal appropriately.

Mixing Mag pups and piezos can often be problematic due to impedance mismatches, you will need buffers and such.

My latest guitar project has both mag and piezo and several different kinds of stereo and blend effects (as well as on board tuner and 4 band eq for the piezo)...

But I have tried out and have perhaps the cheapest ($40 new) Behringer version the AM100 (effectively a Boss AC2 clone) and it can sound quite good. Things are improving and many multi effects pedals also include such things, I found I had a few. They are not quite 'acoustic' but some can sound better than a bad piezo system. I use it occassionally to make my acoustic with soundhole mag pickup sound a bit more 'acoustic'.

The behringer does have several cool features though. It has two outputs so one can run stereo or multi amps, so can be a good splitter. It also has 4 sim types and other controls, I tend to favour the 'large' setting for my guitars. Looking for some kind of YT demo, they were all pretty bad and poorly represents what the things are capable of...

I found this audio that is more impressive though...but unlike many, he clearly knows how to use it!

http://www.juzp.net/Lpw2d_QOealRq

But there are other options too, many...and more all the time.

For most, these things may well sound as good or better in an electric guitar than the expense and work of a piezo, more options and as a pedal, can be added to any guitar.

If however, either piezo or modeller, you run HB pickups say and into a conventional guitar rig set for a good electric sound and think at a push of a button or change to piezo you are going to get a gret sound, you will likely be pretty disappointed.

PSW- that very much along the lines of what I had in my head. Vid sounded great.

[psw]

Many would be surprised at how 'acoustic' one can get magnetic pickups with low impedance and such, often very similar to the piezo effect. Bear in mind that piezos amped enough to be sensitive to say, the 'body wood' of a solid body guitar, is quite likely to pick up all kinds of 'handling noise'. You might want this kind of thing if you do some kind of 'percussive' guitar thing, or not. The guitar above was built to limit that in teh bridge design to pickup mostly the strings and not the body to limit that effect.

It is hard to find clips that do sims and pickups justice to their potential...but bear in mind that these are running through amps set for the device or direct to recorders that can optimise the effect. The sims are essentially sophisticated filters and can't really 'add' to the sound. It is highly dependent on the sound it has to work with. Piezos too require that kind of thing to sound 'convincing'.

You might be surprised at how 'acoustic like' some mag pickups could be...listen to the sound of a lace sensor clean and in such a mode...low impedance hi frequency range devices too can be effective...

I think such sounds are towards the end of the clip. There are many magnetic devices that can do a 'good' job of creating acoustic like sounds. Bear in mind that the qualities in teh sustain and the way harmonics build and cancel and reinforce is a complex thing in an acoustic instrument while different in most electrics...this is not necessarily a bad thing, but they are different so anything really is a bit of a 'sim' in coparison...IMHO