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Came across a very cheap Yamaha Silent Guitar - steel string. It needs a good setup, and fresh strings. My biggest concern? When plugged in, the Fishman pickup exhibits that glassy over-crisp high end that I just HATE, and the 2 band EQ on the instrument is not going to be sufficient. Without adding a lot of processing between the guitar and amp - can you offer any reasonable suggestions to mellow out the harshness? Thanks.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Easy, route that sucker for a Humbucker!

That is a viable alternative, Allan!

However, I'd like the acoustic sound to be reasonably useable. Back in the Stone Age of piezo pickups (before they went hex), I would cut a rubber band to place between the saddle and the pickup to cut the harshness. Since I have to lower the saddle anyway.... why not take it a wee bit farther, and add some rubber?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Does one of the controls on the EQ change the treble? If it does you could add a cap across its filter cap. Is it a user mod, or was the pickup a factory install? I did not think they used Fishman on Yamaha.
Use a capacitor on the output with a resistor in series to ground to bleed the treble away. These components could be mounted on the Electronics board. I did one long ago, not sure if it was a Fishman, can't recall the values. I used a step resistor and a few cap values to get it right, then replaced the step with a single.
I fixed a problem on a Ibanez performance, it had a cardboard wafer over the piezo, but under the saddle. It had come out and been folded. This caused 2 dead strings from the pickup. It looked very clean, like a factory install so I put it back, not wanting to replace the saddle. It must have been to cut the treble as well.

You DO understand how active EQ works, don't you? Boost AND cut? No need to add a cap.




It's factory. Not really familiar with these, are ya?

Get hip.
http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical- ... ntguitars/

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Changed the old bronze strings out for a set of electric 10's, took .075 off the bottom of the saddle and now I have a sweet playing unit. The new strings sound better than the old stuff, but it's still not quite an acoustic sound (and yes, that super crisp attack remains unless you play really quietly).

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Now thinking maybe one of those Bill Lawrence acoustic pickups that mounts like a jazz archtop - end of fingerboard. Mix with the piezo....

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Chris
Initially I was not going to respond to your post, but then decided that seeing as I have built a short scale practice headless guitar that is about 24" long in total, fitted with a valve amp to headphone, and output for amplifier, but I have torn it down to make it better and will fit more electronics I hoped this topic might generate more ideas for me to use.
Answer to your post, not in order of your statements,
Firstly
I have seen a few of these about 8 years ago, then 5 years ago in a music shop and never again. Interesting idea.

Second
Yamaha do not use Fishman, I'm not sure why you mentioned them. Yamaha use their own design according to them called SRT, further, check the Fishman website here http://www.fishman.com/fishmanequipped/ ... brands.php.

Thirdly
EQ, do know how they work? was your question, LOL, I think I do, I earn my keep as an electronics technician and was involved in the the broadcast industry for a time working on top line equipment.
Hobby, I have repaired amps, pedals as well as building some. In recent years guitars, and a fair share of these had onboard electronics. So, very generically a filter is created at a frequency selected by caps and resistors, often using feedback to create sharp slopes either side of the selected frequency. The signal passing though is amplified or attenuated, sometimes in the same band pass, or otherwise afterwards.
This unit has only bass and treble , but from the description they are trying to create the sounds made by a soundboard and body which means other filters not user adjustable. Without a circuit diagram this one is impossible to quantify, but to do this means all sorts of tampering with the response. The book set, Contemporary Accoustic Guitar Design and Build by Trevor Gore and Gerard Gilet has a good scientific approach to soundboard response. Trevor is a member on the forum.
Now if it were a mixing desk with say 16 controls, you could get the response closer to what you want, which is what Yamaha are doing with this SRT module.
Even then, when testing flatness it will be seen that bumps occur in the response. So you have no chance.

that's why I suggested a roll-off cap if you know it is treble you want to remove. A simple filter would not create humps.

Whilst this will add another signal, I see the guitar has an input, whilst it will do nothing to make it sound more acoustic, provided you get one with resonance in the right place could do what you want.

You did, as I remember. Then you deleted it. Right?



I checked the handbook that came with the instrument, and it says they use an LR Baggs unit (so I was wrong). Of course, this is a Gen 1 version, and Yamaha just released their Gen 3 version. The Gen 3 may indeed be their own pickup design, I haven't checked. Just my opinion - they need to improve the sound and make it more natural.

Mike, according to the latest I've read on this instrument - the newest insides are closer to being modeling circuits (like a synth) than actual traditional EQ's.

And Allan's suggestion of a humbucker is still not a bad a idea. The Bill Lawrence A-400 pickup has a rep for being somewhat acoustic sounding. That's why they've been great sellers since the 70's.

I'm not looking for true acoustic sound, else I wouldn't even have considered a guitar with no soundbox. I just find that super high piezo sound annoying, and rolling off the treble doesn't work. Probably why I steered clients away from piezo stuff, and towards internal microphones - especially Ken Donnell's MiniFlex systems. I sold and installed a ton of them, with good client response.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I opened up the back of the instrument....
It DOES look like a synth in there - all circuit boards and so on.
Found a pic on the web, it's a little small.
Mine has EVEN MORE stuff in it than this pic shows....

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/23 ... 8ec49c.jpg

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince