MarkDyson
Blues Hound Wannabe
So, some early impressions....
First off, this will never be a "proper" acoustic in the sense of playing unplugged around the campfire. It's plenty loud for the person playing—strikingly so—but, unless you're in a smallish circle and everyone's paying attention and you're not competing with ambient noise, you're gonna have to plug in to be heard. Now, given that until now my go-to acoustic has been the Air Guitar that's almost completely silent unplugged, clearly that issue doesn't bother me. When I play for myself it's great, and when I play out I'm always plugged in. There's actually a small negative in that this thing will probably be too loud unplugged for me to practice in the studio when SWMBO is trying to sleep down the hall. Not getting rid of the Air Guitar any time soon.
The electric tones are great! Some folks say it's just not a Tele but for my ear the bridge pickup delivers that quack more than closely enough. When you dial in the "B" mod sound (even without playing) you can hear the gain come through the amp. Think of the B side as a built-in gain pedal. Not a lot, but enough to get some noticeable hair on your tone—and that's all I generally want anyway.
The acoustic tones all sound great (unless you hate acoustics over piezo pickups in which case you have bigger issues anyway) but, to be honest, to my ear the difference between a rosewood and a mahogany body on a dreadnaught is lost. I just don't hear the difference. I can certainly hear the difference between a dread and a parlor, and so to me positions 4 and 5 on the blade are interchangeable as each gives you a dread/parlor pair to go back and forth between. I like position 4 with the mod knob about halfway for general purpose acoustic playing.
Position 3, adding the sonic mic that reacts to the face's vibration, is rather interesting. I'm not really into percussive stuff, personally, but dialing in that body resonance while playing the A side dreadnaught adds some mic'd-up richness to the tone. Too much of it, though, and to me it sounds really muddy and boomy. I think about 35% of the resonance dialed into the dread tone is my favorite of all the acoustics.
Position 2 is an odd duck. Acoustic dread and you can dial in the Tele pickup. I've not done any double-tracked experimenting but I can see myself spending some time exploring that position in search of a tone that I feel I can mangle to my evil purposes.
The guitar came strung with Fender brand acoustic 11s. I'm gonna leave that be for now and not get into wild-eyed string swaps (huh; who knew?) until I've played it long enough to decide whether the strings are bothering me. I use Earthwoods on my PRS acoustic and on my Air Guitar so, if I decide to switch, that's what I'll go to first.
Open mic night tonight so it'll get its debut then. I haven't a clue yet what I'll name it. No hurry.
First off, this will never be a "proper" acoustic in the sense of playing unplugged around the campfire. It's plenty loud for the person playing—strikingly so—but, unless you're in a smallish circle and everyone's paying attention and you're not competing with ambient noise, you're gonna have to plug in to be heard. Now, given that until now my go-to acoustic has been the Air Guitar that's almost completely silent unplugged, clearly that issue doesn't bother me. When I play for myself it's great, and when I play out I'm always plugged in. There's actually a small negative in that this thing will probably be too loud unplugged for me to practice in the studio when SWMBO is trying to sleep down the hall. Not getting rid of the Air Guitar any time soon.
The electric tones are great! Some folks say it's just not a Tele but for my ear the bridge pickup delivers that quack more than closely enough. When you dial in the "B" mod sound (even without playing) you can hear the gain come through the amp. Think of the B side as a built-in gain pedal. Not a lot, but enough to get some noticeable hair on your tone—and that's all I generally want anyway.
The acoustic tones all sound great (unless you hate acoustics over piezo pickups in which case you have bigger issues anyway) but, to be honest, to my ear the difference between a rosewood and a mahogany body on a dreadnaught is lost. I just don't hear the difference. I can certainly hear the difference between a dread and a parlor, and so to me positions 4 and 5 on the blade are interchangeable as each gives you a dread/parlor pair to go back and forth between. I like position 4 with the mod knob about halfway for general purpose acoustic playing.
Position 3, adding the sonic mic that reacts to the face's vibration, is rather interesting. I'm not really into percussive stuff, personally, but dialing in that body resonance while playing the A side dreadnaught adds some mic'd-up richness to the tone. Too much of it, though, and to me it sounds really muddy and boomy. I think about 35% of the resonance dialed into the dread tone is my favorite of all the acoustics.
Position 2 is an odd duck. Acoustic dread and you can dial in the Tele pickup. I've not done any double-tracked experimenting but I can see myself spending some time exploring that position in search of a tone that I feel I can mangle to my evil purposes.
The guitar came strung with Fender brand acoustic 11s. I'm gonna leave that be for now and not get into wild-eyed string swaps (huh; who knew?) until I've played it long enough to decide whether the strings are bothering me. I use Earthwoods on my PRS acoustic and on my Air Guitar so, if I decide to switch, that's what I'll go to first.
Open mic night tonight so it'll get its debut then. I haven't a clue yet what I'll name it. No hurry.
