Well, If I'm Steven Stills, and I'm paying thousands of dollars for acoustic guitar, no matter what brand, I would be firing the recording engineer who wrecked the sound of those guitars with the processing. Everything that he rants about using pickups rather than mics in D. Tuna's post is what sounds wonky with his guitar in the youtube video.

Here's live concert footage with an end-pin jack in place and it's nearly the same exact sound. Missing some mic'ed string squeak is about the only difference to the previous YouTube. Maybe there's one of those little condenser's inside, but it sounds mostly pickup to me. From the looks of the haircuts, I'm guessing this pre-dates internal condenser mics in general. It's all that farty and 'acky' snap sound and doubled or chorused. I'd lay money that endpin jack has a Fishman style UST on the business end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUmIO_MG5IU&feature=related

It just doesn't sound like the way an acoustic guitar should to me. I would love to hear that Martin naturally, rather than through a pickup. No doubt he's a good player, but the beauty of the ancient slothead Martin is completely and totally gone in both of these clips. Great playing, but it likely wouldn't sound any different on a sub $500 Yamaha with Stephen at the helm given the same exact signal chain.

To hear a more acoustic sound, the KEL microphones page has some decent sound clips. Here's one: http://www.kelaudio.com/acoustic_full_mix.mp3

Those guitars sound much more expensive to me than the Stills examples. You can almost hear the 'wood' in the sound. Can almost guarantee that they aren't multi-thousand dollar collector pieces either.

Here's another one in a style that isn't terribly different than the Stills song: http://www.kelaudio.com/hm1xyacoustic1.mp3

Gene - you can get very close to the Stills sound, playing ability aside, with the I-beam you plan to buy. In fact, you can get a better sound than that from it. If you are really looking for the electrified sound that these have - the signal chain of Compression/EQ, or EQ/Compression then a doubler either from a very short delay or a chorus will serve you well. You should also be able to get it with the Yamaha. I don't know what kind of pickup is 'the round one in front of the bridge'. Key settings will be the EQ you choose, the level of compression you choose and the delay setting to get the doubled 'fat' sound.

Here's a better guitar than the yamaha / fenders, but certainly not in the Still's league - with a K+K bridge-plate transducer into a K+K preamp, not mic'ed whatsoever. With the LR Baggs, you'll get something pretty similar. With this recording, the only thing that isn't quite 'natural' is the little-bit-too-loud bass response you hear sometimes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZbWWgLUjCY The video was made by one of the regular guys over at the Larrivee forums.

To Still's point in his rant, I've seen large diaphragm condensers used in live performance to get a real acoustic sound. Last year when Allison Krauss and Union Station played in Detroit, they used one for some of the songs. You'll seem 'em on Austin City Limits quite often with players that are sitting and not alot of guitar amps and drums around to bleed in to the sides of the polar pattern.

-Scott

Last edited by rockstar_not; 05/12/09 10:45 PM.
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