Passive boost for guitar

You do not want clipping with music from a voice, acoustic guitar or many other musical instruments because clipping ruins the range of dynamics and makes boring sounds. All musical instruments sound unique and different without any distortion. Maybe a flute sounds similar to a sinewave when it is played softly.

I have heard a piezo vibration sensor on a piano and a drum but never on a guitar.

Electro acoustic guitars with built-in pickups, almost always piezo, are extremely common; this one guitar shop lists over 1000 different types.

The sound difference to an electric guitar is due to it picking up mechanical vibration rather than from how the moving string influences the magnetic field over an electric guitar style pickup.

But; you can also get magnetic pickups for acoustic guitars, usually soundhole mounting - they just fit across the hole under the strings. They are quite popular.




And then such as this, in one in my collection, a Steinberger Synapse:
View media item 133
That's an under-bridge Piezo pickup, the exact same principle as in the Yamaha acoustic, so it works on the same mechanical vibration system, not magnetic - but it's an extra facility in some electric guitars, just with additional positions in the pickup selector switch. On that specific one, you can fade or mix between pickup types.



Plus of course there are Semi-acoustic guitars - electric guitars with partly hollow bodies like the classic ES-335

The point is that there is no sudden changeover "Acoustic vs Electric" - just about any sound is possible from any style of guitar, depending on the player and amplification / effects system it's used with.

audioguru said:

You do not want clipping with music from a voice, acoustic guitar or many other musical instruments because clipping ruins the range of dynamics and makes boring sounds.

Click to expand...

You're the only person who doesn't, different effects give different results, you pick which results you want and process accordingly.

rjenkinsgb said:

Electro acoustic guitars with built-in pickups, almost always piezo, are extremely common; this one guitar shop lists over 1000 different types.

Click to expand...

And are a complete pain in the bum if you're running the PA

They are incredibly prone to acoustic feedback - you can't beat metal strings and a nice magnetic pickup, no feedback issues

My daughter, back when she was doing a fair number of gigs as a bass player (and lead singer), had this really annoying habit of taking her acoustic bass rather than one of her electric basses - and it was almost impossible to get it loud enough without feeding back, and I'm not talking loud gigs either.

Piezo's seem particularly bad for feedback, dynamic mikes are far better - I've always suspected the larger body on an acoustic bass guitar made it even worse than normal guitars.

Nigel Goodwin said:

And are a complete pain in the bum if you're running the PA

Click to expand...

Absolutely!

I don't generally like acoustic guitars anyway - big, clumsy, awkward, high strings, tend to warp easily and incredibly easy to damage compared to a solid body guitar.

I only got that Yamaha acoustic as I like repairing and restoring such things, and it was a ludicrously good bargain due to the damage making it unusable.

My tastes vary from conventional styles like Les Paul & Strat through more technically unusual ones - like the Steinbergers - and one Strat has a built-in polyphonic MIDI converter so you can connect to a synth as well as an amp, and switch to playing a keyboard or sax etc. from it!

See if you can interest your daughter in of these? A full scale length bass but nice and compact, and not even expensive:
https://flic.kr/p/Z3fjZP

OK, ETO is broken when it comes to Flickr links; it momentarily appeared then updated to black!
Try again:

rjenkinsgb said:

OK, ETO is broken when it comes to Flickr links; it momentarily appeared then updated to black!
Try again:

View attachment 136759

Click to expand...

I think she'd probably like that

However, I don't know if she's playing much bass these days?, as she lives in a different country, but her and her husband have got an impressive instrument collection - he was originally a bagpipe player, and Melissa is now playing Hurdy Gurdy

Knew I'd got a picture somewhere, this is their instruments collection:

Nigel Goodwin said:

this is their instruments collection:

Click to expand...

They have a seriously impressive range of musical abilities to play so many different types of instrument!

Yes, Mike's the bag pipe player - in fact the first thing Melissa ever said to Mike was that his bag pipes were out of tune, and told him which note He admitted he'd dropped them, and the dent had altered the tuning of that note.

To be honest, I'm not very sure who plays what, but Melissa's first three instruments were Piano Flute and Bass Guitar.

As far as I'm aware the last gig they did Mike played bagpipes (with one of his old pipe bands) and Melissa played Hurdy Gurdy.

The piano, five basses, two guitars, flute, and piano accordian are what Melissa took out from the UK, as far as I know the bagpipes were Mike's, and the rest has been collected since they got together. Melissa also plays drums, but they don't have any.