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Just wondering if other builders compensated in any way when building instruments for customers who use under-saddle or soundboard pick-ups ? Stiffer back & sides? Reduced body depth?

Regards

Craig.

 

Not that I know of Craig. We build acoustics basically around here to be acoustics. The pickups have to fend for themselves!   

_________________
http://www.dickeyguitars.com

And, Bruce, that is part of the problem... Saying that pickups have to fend for themselves is a great way to ignore the fact that well over 50% of the "acoustic guitars" sold these days in a price range from about $500.00 to $3,000.00 have pickups in them. Taylor, for instance, is up at about 70% of their production sent out with pickups.   Ignore the truth at your peril!

Pickups do not fend best for themselves; they do best when considered to be a part of a whole system. You cannot separate a pickup from the instrument into which it is installed and expect high performance.   It's like saying that bracing will fend for itself.   It's an incredibly facile, uninformed, and erroneous statement.

I've designed a series of instruments...my Renaissance semi-hollow styles...specifically to be amplified. Here's a funny story. About 9 years ago, shortly after I came here to Santa Cruz, Jeff Traugott dropped in. He'd been at a gig the night before where Bill Walker played a Traugott with a Highlander in it and also one of my RS-6 models...with what is now a Timberline pickup and custom electronics made for me by...Highlander (of which I'd been a founding partner).   Jeff, in his usual enthusiastic voice, asked, "What's up, Turner? Why did your guitar sound more acoustic than mine last night?   And it's not acoustic!!"   "Well, it's because I design mine to be amplified, and that enhances the sonic/acoustic illusion..."

So the answer is that a pickup is an integral part of the overall design package.   And the simplest statement re. design is that ultra acoustic guitars amplify very poorly. The rest is up to you to design to your intended client base and to do some experimentation.   I found the particular design formula that works for my intended customers.   It's everything...neck design is very important; I build semi-hollow instruments with careful wood choices; I designed the pickup system myself and the bridge to the pickup design.   It's a total package.

Rick, I knew you'd be along, gotcha!

I agree with you, I just don't know any of the secrets.

_________________
http://www.dickeyguitars.com

There aren't any secrets. There's knowledge.

Sooooo......can anyone impart some knowledge to Graig's original, and valid question? I for one, thought it was a good question and not deserving of a "gotcha".

What do the factories do...what do builders do when setting up a guitar for amplification?

_________________
JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

Just to put Rick Turner's comment into perspective:

Rick Turner: "I'd just like to jump in and say that we, as pickup designers, have saved the acoustic guitar from the dustbin of history." Acoustic Guitar magazine July 2007.

Perhaps some OLF members are not aware of the tremendous debt we all owe to Rick, for being a leader in the salvation of the acoustic guitar.

John

Well, I can add a little bit here...

All of my acoustics are pickup-equipped. It's just something performing
musicians require. And there are some considerations involved if
designing the guitar from the ground up. So, here's my limited
experience:

If the pickup is an undersaddle type, highs can be an issue. A guitar with
a lot of crisp high end (think stiff-braced dreadnaught) can be
overpowering with an undersaddle of typical design. Boominess is
another issue; Too much low end mud makes the amplified signal, well,
muddy.

The film-style pickups like B-band or the under-bridge like the Baggs I-
beam seem to like a guitar with a lot of crispness, but boominess is an
even bigger problem with these types of pickups. Yes, EQ can remove
some problems, but it's best to get as close as possible to your intended
sound without relying on EQ to correct it. Sometimes that's impossible,
but it's a nice way to start.

All that said, the built-to-be-amplified acoustics like Rick's Renaissance
or Tom Anderson's Crowdster work better on stage as amplified acoustics
than a typical acoustic that's got a pickup in it. It's just that most
guitarists want a traditional acoustic that sounds good amplified, which
always involves some compromises.

Hope that helps!

I trend to see Ricks point on that even dorbos and violins are fitted with pickups.

I personaly am crazy enough to want to try a blend cone transducer, one of Ricks rick type, and a mike and see what I could get a sqareneck to do.

_________________
"It's a Tone Faerie thing"
"Da goal is to sharpen ur wit as well as ye Sgian Dubh"
"Sippin Loch Dhu @Black lake" ,Kirby O...

John, I know that you resent that quote from me, but step back a minute and look at the real market for acoustic guitars. If any people should get credit...or blame...for the near universal use of pickups, they would be Larry Fishman and Lloyd Baggs. It's so easy to look down at people who put pickups into guitars, and it's so easy to lock yourself it the highest room of the ivory tower and ignore how guitars are really used. But who is the artist here?   Take a look at MTV or VH-1 or any TV show that has an acoustic guitarist. 9 times out of 10 they're playing plugged in or they are faking it to a prerecorded track.   That's how acoustic guitars are used when they're not in the living room.

Our little high-end lutherie scene here is a remora, a parasite, if you will, on the big world of Ovations, Takamines, Washburns, Deans, Epiphones, and then Taylors, Martins, Larrivees, etc. We owe all those manufacturers our very living, because without them building and selling and popularizing the guitar, we wouldn't have a market for our precious bits and pieces of wonderful instruments.

I'd suggest getting out of the ivory tower and getting real. Reality suggests that guitars can be optimized for amplification, but that tends to go against the grain of the egos of high end luthiers. The world of solo acoustic guitar is tiny...and most of its leading players use pickups...Laurence Juber, Martin Simpson, Phil Keaggy, Muriel Anderson...the list goes on and on. Then there are all the folks using acoustic guitars in band settings. Pickups, folks, that's what has made it all possible.   The sales of your guitars is driven by people playing guitars with pickups in them, not by living room players or acoustic purists.   

My standard formula for the Renaissance line includes a Western Red Cedar center block, bent sides, a book matched back and often a cedar top.   The neck is mahogany. The neck is tremendously important to tone, and so is the center block.   That's what I know after supervising the building of close to 2,000 of these in steel and nylon string guitars and fretted and fretless basses.

But I'd suggest that anyone wanting to optimize guitars for pickup use do their own tests and research. Don't just copy other builders. Learn, then innovate.

Thanks folks for sharing your thoughts . Its something I have pondered for a number of years . Now that I have started building I want to be able to have the best of both worlds, a traditionally built instrument that sounds great accoustically and plugged in. I realise that I will have to make some compromises along the way just not sure where to start.  Interesting story Rick . I personally have ony heard a few that sounded anywhere near what I would consider natural acoustic sound. Rick I'm intrigued by the "center block". Could you explain how this works and also the neck and it's  role tonewise?Thanks.

Craig. 

Frankly, I've said all that is relevant that I know; the rest is up to you. Look at what's been done and listen to it.   Think on it.   Figure it out. Understand it. Decide what works and what doesn't for what you want to achieve. Own the knowledge. Don't be the lutherie equivalent of a parrot. Copy only to learn. Then be as original as you can be.

Rick I respect the fact that you have spent many thousands of hours studying and researching this very topic and I for one appreciate the fruit of that hard work. I love and use the products that you have made available on the market . I guess what I am really wanting is some basic guidlines or principles to work with as I want to include a pickup in all the guitars that I build in the future. Thanks again.

 

Craig.  

Rick, how do you believe the amplifier fits in. What were you expecting
on that side when you designed the Renaissance? I'm designing an amp
for one of our tonewood suppliers right now, so it would be interesting to
hear. I'll be bodyboarding today with a madatory stop in Sylvan. Last
time when I played a Renaissance I liked the guitar but thought the
amplifier was effecting the sound negatively. It was a Fishman.

[QUOTE=fmorelli]Actually more to the point - guitars are designed differently for recording than for playing in a living room. I like a guitar with sustain and complex overtones. Makes for one helluva crappy recording instrument, but a nice parlor playing instrument. Note separation, under amplification, seems a greater priority than in an acoustic situation.



My experience has been that guitars designed for recording actually sound kinda dead or flat when played acoustically - but they sound darn good on the playback.



Filippo[/QUOTE]



this is why I completely love my '86 Taylor K20ce...I've found it to have very little in the area of 'lovely' overtones, yet it is my main axe because it always gives at worst a good recording, and rarely if ever feeds back while on stage...while made during an era of amplified 'ignorance' the koa top lends it to be very stable for amplification, IMHO...great little story behind this guitar...I was shopping at Guitar Showcase in San Jose, Ca. and was checking out a solid koa Martin, and the salesman of that time was TJ (who later went to work for Taylor)...he gave me a heavy sales pitch for a Taylor, and even went so far as to get me on the phone with Robert Taylor, which led to me hashing out my direct needs and getting a totally custom built instrument!...Bob even went so far as to delete the Taylor logo from the headstock and replace it with an inlay I wanted...in the big picture that concession earned him a lot of positive feedback for Taylor guitars, as I repeatedly get asked who made the guitar because of its lack of logo!

but back to the subject of amplification, it is a serious subject and guitars designed for such use will sound far better than those that are designed to sound good to the ear in ones home...in general...I say this because probably the best sounding acoustic I ever owned was a circa '80 D-28...sadly I had to make the choice of selling it or eating out of dumpsters...that one sounded godlike either by ear or on stage...it had a very unique sound spectrum that I can only term as one of a lifetime...if I ever saw it on eBay (and I would recognize it by the grain of the wood on the back) I would pull out even my highest interest rate credit card and grab it up!
 

Re. MTV and VH-1. Get real. That is where most of the folks who are under 35 have been exposed to phenomenon of acoustic guitars. Stop with the folkie purist stuff, go to your closest Guitar Center, and try to hide your distaste for the masses for a moment. Acoustic guitar purists are among the most ivory tower-bound elitists on the planet. I am very thankful for the opportunity to have attended close to 60 NAMM shows, the Japan Music Fair, the Musik Messe in Frankfurt, and to work for and with some of the big companies in the music industry...yes, "industry". While I am most definitely a "small shop/boutique" builder, I have what I believe is a pretty accurate and wide view of guitar sales world-wide, and we here are a gnat on the elephant's ass when it comes to guitar sales.   So VH-1 and MTV are most definitely not the ivory tower, they are the drivers of much of the music products industry.   You may not like it, but that doesn't mean it's any less the truth.

Take "Unplugged" for instance...and then realize that most of the unplugged acts were using acoustic guitars...with pickups in them. Unplugged has been responsible for probably at least 1,000 times more guitar sales than the total number of guitars ever made by all of the OLF members.   

You can sniff down your nose at all the cheap guitars made and bought, but it's those guitars that hopefully inspire their owners to move up-scale someday to the kind of instruments we make.   Do you realize that in the real world of music stores, "high-end" for guitars starts at about $1,000.00?   Where does that put us?   Yes, it puts us in the Rolls Royce/Ferrari/Maserati/Lamborghini class relative to our potential market.   How's that for ivory tower?

Guitars can and should be designed for all sorts of different settings and uses. You can design guitars to project very directionally; you can design them to envelope the player in a kind of bubble of tone; you can make them sparkle or rumble; you can design for short, explosive attack, or you can make them sound like they are in a church with overtones and reverb. There is no one guitar that does it all for everyone in every setting, and while I can understand how difficult it looks for beginning guitar makers to simply make a guitar that looks and sounds like something someone would play and buy at all, in fact there are depths to the range of design and voicing that are a whole lot more subtle than you're going to achieve in just a few guitars. You've got to get way beyond the basics of cutting, joining, gluing, bending, etc., and get to the whole issue of the intent of the guitar you're building and the expectations of the person buying it.

I've now got a good 15 years into this whole semi-hollow acoustic electric specialty, and my instruments work very well for those for whom they are intended...pro, semi-pro, and dedicated amateur musicians who want an "acoustic" sound plugged in with none of the issues of rumble, feedback, etc. that standard guitars have in many situations. And even as the designer, I get surprised by some of my clients. Many are now choosing to use my instruments in home and pro recording studios because it's so easy to plug in and go. In some cases, the sound is sort of a hybrid of acoustic and electric tonality as with this cut:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceqN4IyIEgo&eurl=http://www.s tephenbruton.com/

Is it the sound of a great OM or Dread? No, but it works very, very well with the context.   This was recorded direct with no processing...

And that is the issue...context.   We can design to context. We make musicians' tools.   We can learn to make them in a nearly infinite range, the only problem is that it can take decades to really figure that out, and too many young-to-the-craft luthiers simply want a formula.   

Guitars can and should be designed for all sorts of different settings and uses. You can design guitars to project very directionally; you can design them to envelope the player in a kind of bubble of tone; you can make them sparkle or rumble; you can design for short, explosive attack, or you can make them sound like they are in a church with overtones and reverb. There is no one guitar that does it all for everyone in every setting, and while I can understand how difficult it looks for beginning guitar makers to simply make a guitar that looks and sounds like something someone would play and buy at all, in fact there are depths to the range of design and voicing that are a whole lot more subtle than you're going to achieve in just a few guitars. You've got to get way beyond the basics of cutting, joining, gluing, bending, etc., and get to the whole issue of the intent of the guitar you're building and the expectations of the person buying it.

Guitars can and should be designed for all sorts of different settings and uses. You can design guitars to project very directionally; you can design them to envelope the player in a kind of bubble of tone; you can make them sparkle or rumble; you can design for short, explosive attack, or you can make them sound like they are in a church with overtones and reverb. There is no one guitar that does it all for everyone in every setting, and while I can understand how difficult it looks for beginning guitar makers to simply make a guitar that looks and sounds like something someone would play and buy at all, in fact there are depths to the range of design and voicing that are a whole lot more subtle than you're going to achieve in just a few guitars. You've got to get way beyond the basics of cutting, joining, gluing, bending, etc., and get to the whole issue of the intent of the guitar you're building and the expectations of the person buying it.

_________________
"It's a Tone Faerie thing"
"Da goal is to sharpen ur wit as well as ye Sgian Dubh"
"Sippin Loch Dhu @Black lake" ,Kirby O...

How did that happen? The same paragraph from my previous post copied and pasted twice in this last post without attribution or quotation marks...Is that supposed to mean something or is it a slip of the fingers?

Just thought I would let every one know I thought it was worth reading two more times,

if thought attrib was not obvious,,

It is poetic though maybe I should post it elsewhere with atribb make people think you have turned a little mellow.

I was going to put WORTH READING TWICE in a post bellow it.

Rick about five years ago something happened at times I lose focus some times completely, if it shows please have patience.

             Kirby

_________________
"It's a Tone Faerie thing"
"Da goal is to sharpen ur wit as well as ye Sgian Dubh"
"Sippin Loch Dhu @Black lake" ,Kirby O...

for about the last year I also have my soon to be 22 year old autistic son living with me. My ex made it hard for me to be much involved until she could no longer control him. We have made a lot of progress but still have some serious issues to work on.

I at all times must keep on such an even keel.
I fear lapses when I let my guard down here.

Besides those issues there is one that I enjoy, half the time the Tone Faerie are having arguments in my head that make this place seem like church,

Yes I know, mini stroke or just hit in the head one to many times.

_________________
"It's a Tone Faerie thing"
"Da goal is to sharpen ur wit as well as ye Sgian Dubh"
"Sippin Loch Dhu @Black lake" ,Kirby O...

Fine sounding acoustic guitars are living room and recording studio instruments. That's not going to go away. But if the guitars that you make are going to be used on stage, then chances are about 95% that they will be plugged in, right?   In face, based on the last ten live shows I've been to, make that 98% plugged in. This includes mostly small venues in the 100 to 250 seat range.   Plugged in...

One of the big markets for fine acoustic guitars is the Friday evening or Sunday morning worship scene. From what I see, people who play guitars in churches and synagogues tend to spend big bucks on their guitars. Then they plug them in.

So why not make guitars that work well that way?

Then make other guitars for the living room and studio.

And don't go getting weird and say it's going to be all Mexi Strats. That's a churlish and reactionary statement inspired by a phenomenon that isn't comfortable to you, yet is quite real.   

For Joni, that move was to the Roland VG-8 system and the reason didn't have anything to do with sound; it was so she could program (well, actually the programming was done by a couple of other people, Hank Linderman being one) dozens of the tunings that she used in writing a lot of her songs.

We are living in a changing technological time; we have to adapt to the musical changes; we have to recognize the importance of electronics in how guitars are actually used on stage...unless we simply want to build parlor and campfire instruments. Some major companies are doing very well by designing to these times.   Takamine, Godin, Yamaha, and yes, even Ovation have made acoustic-sounding plug-in guitars work. There's no reason why we luthiers cannot make such guitars that work better.

Or you can just give it up to Mexi Strats...

My choice has been to try to design better acoustic-electrics...among other guitars.

I agree with that...

this is all very interesting. i am building my first guitar, a parlor
guitar. i ONLY care about how my guitar sounds pluged in. i have a nice
martin and a nice tacoma so i feel good to go if i dont want to plug
in. But i play a lot of shows and i am looking for only a few things,
sound, and as small and light as i can make it. As much as i dont like
taylor the T5 is a great sounding guitar. anyone wanna give me a push
in the right direction as to how a begginer should go about building
this kind of guitar. Rick? you look like the expert on this : )