Help with a piezoelectric accoustic guitar track

[Spark]

I have some tracks here to be mixed where the acoustic guitar tracks were recorded by taking a 1/4" straight out of the piezo pickup. Needless to say they are not the most natural sounding acoustic guitar tracks Ive heard. Does anyone have any hints on how to get a more natural sound out of these tracks? I know this is like asking 'how do I get my les paul to sound like a tele' or ' how do I make my solid state amp sound more like a tube amp', but any help would be appreciated!

[newfuturevintage]

retrack the part.


barring this, bury it, or accept and embrace it.

[argonautlabs]

Honestly I would say retrack it with a mic too, but that is probably not what you want to hear. Sometimes acoustic pickups can sound more natural through a guitar amp than direct. You could try playing back through a guitar amp (impedance match if needed) then mic that.

[rhythm ranch]

One of the most amazing acoustic guitars I ever heard was a cheap no-name being played in a well-known guitar shop on Staten Island (I can't remember the name of the shop. Somebody help me here.) The guy playing was sitting in a little cubby in the store. I was blown away by how full-bodied and rich it sounded. As I listened a little closer, I realized that what I was actually hearing was the sympathetic vibration of all the other guitars, mandolins, banjos, etc. hanging on the walls all around him.

Maybe you could reamp the track with 2, or 3, or 4 guitars around the amp/speaker and mic that with an omni.

Just a thought, I've never tried it.

[drumsound]

Reamp!

[dsw]

Maybe run it through one of those Fishman things? I've heard some pretty amazing sounds out of those.

http://www.fishman.com/products/details.asp?id=92

Awww crap. They've discontinued the one I was thinking of so.... *slumps in chair*

[JWL]

+1 on reamp. If I had to deal with that, I'd run it through my Yamaha AG Stomp (like a POD for acoustic guitars with piezo pickups). You can get some shockingly good tone out of those.

[teleharmonium]

I probably would not reamp; you could most likely make it sound better that way, but it may not end up sounding more natural. (Then again, sometimes seemingly unlikely approaches can work amazingly well.)

You probably have thin, bright tone on this recording because the piezo has a much higher impedance than what the input to your system was expecting, and a low level. The optimal way to handle this is with a preamp or transformer designed for a piezo pickup that would change the impedance on the way in, but I'm assuming it's too late and you need to work with what you have. So, what I would do is roll off high end, maybe boost mids or upper mids a bit, give it some clean gain if it needs it, and maybe add a little reverb to simulate the complexity that would have been there from the top of the guitar moving a little air in front of the mic; the piezo sound is more like putting your ear right against the body. And then if you had to crank your preamp when you were recording to get enough signal, you might have caused some ringing, so you might want to check for that with your ears and an analyzer plug in or whatever, and notch it out if there is a problem area.

[drumsound]

I probably would not reamp; you could most likely make it sound better that way, but it may not end up sounding more natural. (Then again, sometimes seemingly unlikely approaches can work amazingly well.)

You probably have thin, bright tone on this recording because the piezo has a much higher impedance than what the input to your system was expecting, and a low level. The optimal way to handle this is with a preamp or transformer designed for a piezo pickup that would change the impedance on the way in, but I'm assuming it's too late and you need to work with what you have. So, what I would do is roll off high end, maybe boost mids or upper mids a bit, give it some clean gain if it needs it, and maybe add a little reverb to simulate the complexity that would have been there from the top of the guitar moving a little air in front of the mic; the piezo sound is more like putting your ear right against the body. And then if you had to crank your preamp when you were recording to get enough signal, you might have caused some ringing, so you might want to check for that with your ears and an analyzer plug in or whatever, and notch it out if there is a problem area.

So you're saying you wouldn't reamp to get the better sound that would most likely do the things you described in the second paragraph, especially get some air in front of the sound, but actually pushing air with a speaker?

[teleharmonium]

I probably would not reamp; you could most likely make it sound better that way, but it may not end up sounding more natural. (Then again, sometimes seemingly unlikely approaches can work amazingly well.)

You probably have thin, bright tone on this recording because the piezo has a much higher impedance than what the input to your system was expecting, and a low level. The optimal way to handle this is with a preamp or transformer designed for a piezo pickup that would change the impedance on the way in, but I'm assuming it's too late and you need to work with what you have. So, what I would do is roll off high end, maybe boost mids or upper mids a bit, give it some clean gain if it needs it, and maybe add a little reverb to simulate the complexity that would have been there from the top of the guitar moving a little air in front of the mic; the piezo sound is more like putting your ear right against the body. And then if you had to crank your preamp when you were recording to get enough signal, you might have caused some ringing, so you might want to check for that with your ears and an analyzer plug in or whatever, and notch it out if there is a problem area.

So you're saying you wouldn't reamp to get the better sound that would most likely do the things you described in the second paragraph, especially get some air in front of the sound, but actually pushing air with a speaker?

I'm saying the above is what I would do first. If I couldn't get to results I was happy with, I'd certainly be open to trying other things. Pushing air is good, but an amp and speaker are not a natural part of an acoustic guitar signal chain, so I don't see it as the default or no brainer approach. The issue is more EQ than anything else, if it's like other piezo right into a line or instrument input tracks I have worked with. The reverb is a decidedly secondary part of that initial strategy. I have no way of knowing whether it is actually necessary without hearing the track.

[darjama]

a shot in the dark, I've seen this recommended else where, haven't tried it myself:

run the track through headphones, and wrap the headphones around the body of an acoustic guitar with an open (or kaypo'd) tuning in the key of the song. Mic the guitar, and mix with the piezo signal. It's more re-acoustic-ing than reamping.

[RefD]

a shot in the dark, I've seen this recommended else where, haven't tried it myself:

run the track through headphones, and wrap the headphones around the body of an acoustic guitar with an open (or kaypo'd) tuning in the key of the song. Mic the guitar, and mix with the piezo signal. It's more re-acoustic-ing than reamping.

yah, someone posted a photo of this technique a couple of years back...i think the phones were closed over the part of the body near the neck, but i forget the mic placement, but that would probly vary according to the instrument and mic and desired sound.

also, i would skip the open tuned strings...damp the strings and just mic the resonating body.

[teleharmonium]

a shot in the dark, I've seen this recommended else where, haven't tried it myself:

run the track through headphones, and wrap the headphones around the body of an acoustic guitar with an open (or kaypo'd) tuning in the key of the song. Mic the guitar, and mix with the piezo signal. It's more re-acoustic-ing than reamping.

That idea is kind of like the Soundboard amp. I don't know if those are still made, but they used cabinets where the baffle board was X braced spruce with a soundhole, built just like a guitar. Attached to the flat inside of the top was a transducer. So you could take a solidbody guitar with a piezo and run it into this thing, and you actually had all of the same elements as an acoustic guitar, just not all physically attached to each other, with the piezo, amp and transducer enabling that separation. Obviously in a studio, you could run anything you want through it. If you knew what the transducer was, or at least the right basic type and way to mount it, you could DIY using a real guitar body, suspended or hung on a stand or frame of some kind.

I never heard one of them, but it's a cool idea.

[Spark]

First off, thank you everyone.


After reading everything I thought hmmm.... I dont really have a proper reamp box so why not try putting the signal through my old keyboard amp. It seems to have worked. I put a mic about 1.5' back and recorded it and its a pretty good improvement and with some EQing it should sit fine. Again thanks to all!

[drumsound]

I probably would not reamp; you could most likely make it sound better that way, but it may not end up sounding more natural. (Then again, sometimes seemingly unlikely approaches can work amazingly well.)

You probably have thin, bright tone on this recording because the piezo has a much higher impedance than what the input to your system was expecting, and a low level. The optimal way to handle this is with a preamp or transformer designed for a piezo pickup that would change the impedance on the way in, but I'm assuming it's too late and you need to work with what you have. So, what I would do is roll off high end, maybe boost mids or upper mids a bit, give it some clean gain if it needs it, and maybe add a little reverb to simulate the complexity that would have been there from the top of the guitar moving a little air in front of the mic; the piezo sound is more like putting your ear right against the body. And then if you had to crank your preamp when you were recording to get enough signal, you might have caused some ringing, so you might want to check for that with your ears and an analyzer plug in or whatever, and notch it out if there is a problem area.

So you're saying you wouldn't reamp to get the better sound that would most likely do the things you described in the second paragraph, especially get some air in front of the sound, but actually pushing air with a speaker?

I'm saying the above is what I would do first. If I couldn't get to results I was happy with, I'd certainly be open to trying other things. Pushing air is good, but an amp and speaker are not a natural part of an acoustic guitar signal chain, so I don't see it as the default or no brainer approach. The issue is more EQ than anything else, if it's like other piezo right into a line or instrument input tracks I have worked with. The reverb is a decidedly secondary part of that initial strategy. I have no way of knowing whether it is actually necessary without hearing the track.

An amp and speaker no, not usually part of an acoustic guitar sound. But neither is a think piece of metal under the bridge creating electrical current. Bit, moving air----most definitely. Hence something moving air so that our ears get at least a little of what they are accustomed to hearing.