Removing Piezo 'Quack' live?

IvisonGuitars

Chaps, going on from @ICBM's thread about piezo sound in the 90's, what do you recommend for getting rid of this in a live situation? 

Played a solo acoustic gig last night and while the audience loved it and didnt really know any better, I started to become aware of the occasional quack from my pickup. 

I'm generally doing pubs and parties so don't need anything über expensive, I'd just like the acoustic sound to be the best it can. 

I'm always plugged in and going through a Klark Technik DI, micing is not really an option, What else is around to help pedalwise? 

Fishman Aura? 

 TC Play Acoustic?

Any real world experience/reviews would be great :-)

ICBM

Fishman Aura. But make sure you understand what it does and that you have the right type of guitar for it before you spend that much money... like a lot of other people (apparently), I didn't when I first tried one and I thought it sounded artificial. User error . When I found out how to use it properly it sounds fantastic, and I bought one. (The big version - it is expensive, but it's very flexible if you have more than one guitar so I can sort-of justify it .)

It's somewhat counterintuitive when you look at the unit - it's not a modelling system that replicates different guitars. It needs to be given the correct signal corresponding to what you set it to, so it can compensate for that and produce a natural-sounding result. If you try to set it to the wrong model it just sounds awful. The small version only comes factory loaded with Dreadnought models, although you can load others via USB. It works best with a very simple input signal - at most, a preamped pickup with no EQ or anything, and it works great with a plain un-preamped pickup (one major reason I like it). It doesn't like an already 'electro-acoustic' sound.

On the big version, the EQ is also factory-set not to work on the modelling, just the pickup itself - you can change this but it isn't obvious when you first plug into it. I can see the logic for studio use or 'pro' live, but for a small gig you want more control. Importantly it also sounds very good as a pickup preamp as well as a mic modelling system - live, you probably want more of the direct pickup sound.

It also has a tuner (which can be set to mute but again doesn't come set that way) and a DI built in, although I don't know if that's useful to you. Also an automatic feedback suppressor, although it's not that easy to set up at something like an open mic because it needs to have feedback in order to locate the frequencies, and it's a bit irritating. It stores the settings but every room and PA is different so that may not be perfect.

digitalkettle

What's in there at the moment?

I've had great results in the past using USTs from K&K and Pick-up The World.

Edit: haven't answered your question...but you can't polish a turd ;-)

IvisonGuitars

@ICBM Thanks! Will check it out.

@digitalkettle Its an LR Baggs Element (no on board EQ) in an Historic Collection J45.

Any other suggestions? :-)

digitalkettle

Well I knew it wouldn't be an Argos special! ;-)

Baggs Para DI not an obvious choice?

Jalapeno

Boss AD pedals are good acoustic preamps - designed to de-quack piezos too

ICBM

miserneil said:

Its an LR Baggs Element (no on board EQ) in an Historic Collection J45.

The Aura works well with that. There's one in the other Gibson acoustic I've got on loan with a view to buying. (More justification! Since the Aura has a setting which works perfectly with it.)

digitalkettle said:

Baggs Para DI not an obvious choice?

That should be good too.

Jalapeno said:

Boss AD pedals are good acoustic preamps - designed to de-quack piezos too

A friend of mine has one of these as well - the older AD-5 - and swears by it. I haven't tried the AD-3 or AD-8.

Of the three I would say the Aura is the most natural-sounding but the fussiest to set up, the Boss is more 'effected' sounding but still good, and the Baggs (which I have the least experience with) is the simplest to use.

IvisonGuitars

Looks like an evening on YouTube might be in order to check them out.

I was also considering the new TC Helicon Play Acoustic. I was umming and ahhing about it when I bought the TC Harmony Singer - which is excellent by the way - as the Play Acoustic has the vocal harmoniser and a BodyRez function to try and eliminate the piezo sound but there seems to be too many menus and screens to go through for my liking.

redlablejohn

http://jjb-electronics.com/
Sound plate transducers. 70% cheaper than K&K. Sound just as good. Your guitar, but louder. I'll never feel the need to go hungry and buy LR Baggs or Fishman.

ICBM

redlablejohn said:

http://jjb-electronics.com/
Sound plate transducers. 70% cheaper than K&K. Sound just as good. Your guitar, but louder. I'll never feel the need to go hungry and buy LR Baggs or Fishman.

Those look to be the same transducers as the Seymour Duncan Hotspots and a few others, in which case they're very good.

mart

I'm puzzled. Those jjb things are based on piezos. How do they not quack like any other piezo pickup? Is it do with their positioning, or their shape?

ICBM

It's partly to do with the high pressure undersaddle pickups are under, which makes them prone to over-reproducing the attack transient, and partly that the 'quack' is more a feature of the way they're usually amplified than the pickup type itself.

The plain old undersaddle pickups in my guitars don't quack going through the Aura.

redlablejohn

Yep ICBM is right. The natural sound I get from these is astounding. No quack. They take sound direct from teh soundplate, no pressure. Just superglued on. I have them in my 1982 EKO Ranger PE1810 XII and my FG-180. I have a K&K set in my Epi J200 and the JJBs are just as good and cost £60-70 less. I do have a K&K preamp and the JJBs sound great through that too.

steamabacus

ICBM said:

It's partly to do with the high pressure undersaddle pickups are under, which makes them prone to over-reproducing the attack transient, and partly that the 'quack' is more a feature of the way they're usually amplified than the pickup type itself.

Taylor's new Expression System 2 supposedly addresses this. Rather than being compressed under the saddle, the piezos are set behind the saddle and adjusted to gently rest against it. I'd like to hear whether it lives up to the claims.

Jalapeno

ICBM said:

Jalapeno said:

Boss AD pedals are good acoustic preamps - designed to de-quack piezos too

A friend of mine has one of these as well - the older AD-5 - and swears by it. I haven't tried the AD-3 or AD-8.

AD3 here - 'tis excellent.

mart

ICBM said:

It's partly to do with the high pressure undersaddle pickups are under, which makes them prone to over-reproducing the attack transient, and partly that the 'quack' is more a feature of the way they're usually amplified than the pickup type itself.

The plain old undersaddle pickups in my guitars don't quack going through the Aura.

Thanks for clarifying.

My next question is whether these are significantly different from the piezo buzzers that Maplins sell for, like, 69p? 

ICBM

mart said:

My next question is whether these are significantly different from the piezo buzzers that Maplins sell for, like, 69p? 

I don't know, but I should get around to finding out! I have a few. And a cheap resonator guitar that needs a pickup...

I'm really not sure how much variation there is in piezo-electric material, or whether the casing would have much effect.

In fact, I'm really not certain how this type of contact pickup even works, since the piezo-electric effect comes from squeezing the crystals - I can easily understand it working in an undersaddle pickup since the string vibration changes the pressure on the saddle, but if it's just a piece of crystal glued to the underside of the soundboard it should (theoretically) just move with the soundboard and not do anything! But they do very definitely work, and produce a good strong signal, so I can only assume the sound waves travel through the material and compress it internally somehow.

mart

I've used the Maplins buzzers on a couple of things, including a bass, a mandola and a hammered dulcimer, and the sound has always been quite usable. I'd be very interested to hear other people's impressions.

In one case (literally) a mate put a buzzer in a very pretty wooden box - about 3cm square, and it still worked fine.

I'm assuming that shaking the piezo crystal is enough. If I put some wine glasses in a box and shook it, they'd feel it, even if I didn't crush the box directly. I'd always guessed that piezos work the same way.

p90fool

I've used transducers on guitar soundboards a few times, from those cheap buzzers, proper guitar ones and most recently a K&K Definity System.

All of them, from two quid to £135 have the same nasty metallic ringing overtones and no usable headroom at all before feedback.

I even have the exact guitar that K&K use on their website, with the pickup fitted in the same place and it's totally unusable above living room volume and sounds so brash and vicious that I can't be arsed to try and notch out the crazy feedback and handling noise.

ICBM

I agree that the soundboard types are much more prone to feedback than undersaddles, but the tone issue sounds more like a preamp problem - what are you running them through?

For what it's worth I completely disagree with K&K that you can go direct to an amp with *any* piezo pickup. The pickup impedance is simply too high to drive anything other than a dedicated acoustic preamp with an input impedance of 10Mohm or higher, and long cables are an issue as well.

redlablejohn

I don't have p90fool's experience personally. Firstly with my Epi J200 fitted with K&K going through a K&K pre-amp I use a feed back suppressor (the rubber soundhole filler) and I rarely get feedback and I play acoustic with a full band behind me and with monitors. 
I don't have any overtone issues, with K&K or JJB. I put them through PA's and acoustic guitar amps and they always sound a real as it gets. The transducers used in JJb and K&K I believe have some very high quality materials rather than your cheapo Maplin elements.Mine are superglued on. The only time I had bad sound was when one of the transducers had come loose slightly and I had to reglue it. I have JJB Prestige transducers in my EKO Ranger early 80's 12 String and in my FG180. all sounding great. The 12 string version of JJB's transducer is a revelation. I can only say how I found things. I searched a long time to get a natural sound and K&K + JJB do it for me. Also the JJB works great through my K&K pre-amp too.