The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #139164   Message #3195300
Posted By: Richard Bridge
25-Jul-11 - 06:03 PM
Thread Name: Tech: guitar pickup - advice, please
Subject: RE: Tech: guitar pickup - advice, please
I agree with Willie-O. I was going to suggest an A to B switch - and to sound like the guitar I find the B-bands pretty good (indeed very like the guitar) although I don't find they always sound like I want. I happened to have every guitar in the house (er 14 - blush - addict, moi?) plugged in the other night for comparison and what sounded best to me were

Shadow powerbridge into Fishman pre-amp (on a Sigma D4)

Headway snake series 1 - Headway preamp (on a Mugen THE 78)

Another Shadow (a straight undersaddle) into some Korean preamp, probably one of the usual suspects (on an old Morris dreadnaught.

The B-band stuff in my Martin OM1 sounded very like the guitar, but not the sound I was looking for. Ditto the B-bands in my FG360. Blending the AST in with the UST on the B-bands is good for the sound but not good for the feedback.

I would however say that I would not expect a sound man or gadgets to kill feedback equally on any pickup. All of the stick-ons from Ashworth to I-beam see to me to feed MUCH earlier than undersaddles (which in turn feed earlier than magnetics, but magnetics sound nothing like a guitar at all). Stick-ons react to vibration, but undersaddles to compression.