I've a bottom of the range Furch grand auditorium with a cedar top and laminate mahogany sides.
It sounds fine, not massively inspiring but I'm not a brilliant acoustic player so it does the job.
It has a Fishman Matrix Infinity fitted, which again does the job of allowing me to plug in and amplify through FOH/PA as needed.
The signal goes Guitar->DI box->Mixing desk.
The piezo quack is very noticeable, and I was wondering if in this age of digital modelling where I can do a reasonable impression of most electric guitar amplifiers with my Helix whether there was a smaller/simpler/cheaper equivalent to allow me to get a more "natural" sound out of a piezo equipped electro-acoustic guitar?
I'd rather avoid going down the line of replacing the under saddle pickup as it's a reasonably cheap guitar and spending another £300 on an LR Baggs Anthem or similar seems excessive, and at least if I had a pedal of some sort I'd presumably be able to easily use it on any electro-acoustic guitar.
Does this sort of thing exist? Or do I just need to live with the piezo quack?
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I've got one and it does exactly what you want. It's relatively old now, not the latest technology, not too expensive, but does a great job of de-piezo-ing (if that's a word ) the sound from an electro-acoustic, as well as being a good preamp/EQ/tuner/reverb unit. Its only real disadvantage is that it's fairly large and heavy.
Although having just checked Ebay prices, I may not be the only one who rates it...
I didn't like the AD-10 - which replaced it - but luckily I hadn't sold the 8 before I got one to try.
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Or just some of the other FX to tame the quack ...
I've had a quick look though and it looks like if I liked the IRs I could load them onto a much smaller pedal like the Mooer Radar (which I believe supports third party IRs), so I think it's definitely worth trying the Sigma IRs as they're by far the cheapest option and I can try it out on my current kit
Most pickups seem to me to be a lot of money spent for very little reward.
At the moment I'm basically looking at trying an acoustic IR on the helix and if that works well getting a smaller pedal to run the IR and use that (total cost £100-110) versus trying a good outboard preamp/effects unit eg Boss AD8/10 or Fishman ToneDEQ (cost from about £180-300), or switching pickup to a K&K mini with or without external preamp (£100 for the K&K mini, preamp anywhere from £100-350).
An outside option is to sell the guitar and buy an electro-acoustic that I like the sound of the fitted pickup (by far the most expensive option, likely to work out £600+ dearer than the next option, but new guitars are always nice)
There is one of the 10 impulses in particular that just fits the guitar and my preferred sound perfectly, I've done a tiny bit of EQ tweaking and added a little reverb, but even with the guitar straight into the IR I'm extremely impressed.
I'll use it live for now and then see if I get fed up lugging the Helix around and buy a small pedal that lets me load the IR I like best onto
I’ve always found IRs a bit phasey and weird sounding in a live situation but maybe I should try again.
FWIW, I saw Nick Harper a few weeks ago (and he was fantastic). I've no idea what pickup was in his acoustic, but he plugged his mic and his guitar into a full fat Helix and sounded great. He was doing a bit more than just IRs, though. He was using a delay and a chorus, for sure.
I think he was monitoring himself from the Helix and sending a feed to the sound engineer.
http://acousticir.free.fr/
The same as with my AxeFx, I just got an IR of a guitar body, and mixed it in
I always have some acoustic patches on my modellers.
For that matter you can get some quite passable electric to acoustic patches that would be good enough for a live performance or jam
For a guitar with just the mini, I'd just do it all in the modeller. In fact I do that, even though I have the external preamp
What it turns out to be is a really good combination with the Baggs Element providing the piezo pickup and the IRig the mic, and when blended are really quite versatile
If considering it is worth checking the underside mount plate as even the K&K's would be pushing it on my Taylor GT Urban Ash.
I have a Mesa Rosetta pedal/preamp/DI which is like having a quality mixer Chanel at your toes and when I used the built in piezo pickup in my 90s epiphone I could get a very nice sound into the PA. I eventually added a fishman PU and mic blend to the guitar for even better fidelity because I enjoy gigging that guitar for hours and hours.