I tried to think of a good use for that Ovation, I really did. Maybe to beat off an attacking moose? (We're in Canada, after all. And Ovations are famous for their durability, aren't they?)
Fortunately, the owner of that particular Ovation eventually realized that the bad sound was caused by the guitar, and traded it in. Like a true musician, she let her ears tell her the truth, even though what they told her contradicted long-held beliefs. I'm proud of her for doing that.
She still has her fifty-year-old Ovation. That guitar has shared some forty years of music-making with her, so I fully understand her loyalty to it.
-Gnobuddy
Came across the same idea (acoustic electric) on another forum.
https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=528194
Thanks for the link!
Not a lot of positive comments there, though it seems most people were talking about piezo Strat saddles, or undersaddle piezos.
I'm not too surprised at the lack of positive comments. In my experience, most members of a purely acoustic guitar forum tend to automatically dismiss all things related to electric guitar. For them, acoustic guitars are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, while electric guitars are made of snips and snails and puppy dog's tails. It seems not much has changed for acoustic diehards since Bob Dylan infuriated them by going electric in 1965.
One of my jam buddies has a Taylor T5 (mentioned on the thread you linked.) His is an exotic special edition made out of Ovangkol, like the one in the attached image. I have no idea what the guitar is capable of sounding like - the owner insists on playing through a Roland Microcube, and all I can hear is what sounds like a guitar playing from inside a small plastic bucket. The little 'Cube is boxy in the extreme, and has virtually no bass response.
My own goals for the piezo-on-a-solid-body are relatively modest. I don't expect it to sound exactly like a perfectly mic'd $30,000 pre-WWII Martin D-28. All I'm hoping for is chords that sound purer and prettier than what you get out of a magnetic pickup.
There is an interesting physics research paper on guitar magnetic pickups floating around the 'Web. The conclusion is that the now-universal guitar pickup design introduces a *lot* of harmonic distortion, because the magnetic field near the pole-pieces dies away with distance in an extremely non-linear way. The guitar string moving through this nonlinear magnetic field gradient induces a distorted signal into the coil, in the same way that sending a sine wave into a nonlinear electronics circuit (diode, say) causes it to distort.
That paper suggests that the distortion inherent in the magnetic pickup is a major reason why electric guitars sound so very different from acoustic guitars, even when played through a clean amp.
Using some cheap piezo discs will avoid that harmonic distortion, and if we can find some good spots on the body, and then maybe also apply some overall EQ, I think we have a good chance of getting a sound that's less obviously electric-guitar, and hopefully kinda-sorta like an acoustic guitar.
Currently, I use a semi-hollow guitar a lot like an ES-335 for both rhythm and lead duties. It goes through EQ, delay, reverb, and a speaker/cab emulation filter, then into the P.A. The beautiful thing about the ES-335 is that it already sounds halfway between a solid-body electric and a proper acoustic.
I won't be putting any piezos on this guitar, though. It's too precious to me, and it's also too hard to access the inside.
-Gnobuddy
Attachments
Apparently Fender Corp. have also been thinking along somewhat the same lines, and have just come out with a new guitar (possibly called the Acoustasonic Telecaster). The body is hollow with a thin spruce top, but with about the same body depth as a Fender solid-body electric guitar, and with a similar screw-on neck. Not your traditional acoustic guitar, nor a typical Fender solid-body "paddle".
It appears to have a piezo undersaddle pickup, a fairly conventional Tele bridge pickup, and an contact mic / impact sensor under the thin spruce top for finger-drumming and whatnot.
Here's an excellent demo video: YouTube
And a short and not particularly informative Wired article: Fender'''s new Acoustasonic is the ultimate all-round guitar | WIRED UK
-Gnobuddy
It appears to have a piezo undersaddle pickup, a fairly conventional Tele bridge pickup, and an contact mic / impact sensor under the thin spruce top for finger-drumming and whatnot.
Here's an excellent demo video: YouTube
And a short and not particularly informative Wired article: Fender'''s new Acoustasonic is the ultimate all-round guitar | WIRED UK
-Gnobuddy
I remember those - I never heard a good word about them from any guitarist who had ever tried one.
The new one might look nice to a mother warthog with low standards, who knows. But it seems there are some much nicer sounds in it than Fender's previous attempts. In the video I linked, you can hear some unpleasant piezo harshness for the first few seconds, then it disappears (maybe they switched on the Fishman Aura EQ thingy at that point.)
The neck appears too narrow for complex chords and left hand parts, or for right hand finger-style playing, except maybe for those with slim fingers and small hands. And there is the unfortunate deformed-goats-foot Tele headstock, also very much an acquired taste.
I'm curious how the new Fender might stack up against a Godin A6 or similar. Godin has been in this corner of the guitar market for a long time, though not well known outside Canada.
-Gnobuddy
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