Magnetic pickups have their own problems, with a more limited frequency and transient response and string-to-string balance issues. Piezos are also significantly nonlinear in their output - if you double the input energy, you get about four times the output - resulting in an overemphasised note attack and a characteristic brittle harshness often referred to as 'piezo quack'. The two most popular approaches to acoustic pickups, the piezo crystal under-saddle transducer (UST) and the magnetic pickup, have one significant limitation in common in that they both almost exclusively 'hear' the string vibration alone, conveying few or none of the other elements. One of the major problems facing the designer of any pickup system for acoustic guitar is that the instrument's sound is actually a combination of several elements - the string vibration, the soundboard resonances, the body-cavity resonances - all interacting in complex ways. There are good reasons for wanting to do this, of course in live sound there are always feedback and separation issues, and in a recording situation, using a pickup gives you isolation from environmental noise, independence from the room acoustics, and the ability to work on speakers rather than headphones when tracking and overdubbing. Although primarily aimed at live performance, could it be a serious option for the studio too?Īccurately reproducing the sound of an acoustic guitar without using a microphone remains one of the great challenges of music technology. This digital processing unit promises a whole new level of realism from acoustic guitar pickups.
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