Also note that the high frequency boost extends down into the upper midrange, which makes the highs less brittle by comparison. This also gives a significant low end boost to offer a big, beefy sound. In this curve, the EQ still raises the highs and lows of the acoustic guitar, but doesn’t roll off the highest frequencies to give a bright sound. 4: The highs and lows are accented, and the midrange scooped to make space for vocals. Taken together, these three response dips still reduce the midrange, but do so with more precision.Īnother option is wanting a “big” sound to accompany a solo singer, but not overwhelm the vocals (Fig. 3: Note how the Low, Lo Mid, and High Mid settings have been tweaked to affect three specific midrange resonances. But of course, you don’t have to imitate the miked sound, and you can use EQ to enhance or reduce particular frequencies for specific applications.Īs just one example, a guitar might have additional resonances you want to reduce (Fig. If you don’t have a miked acoustic guitar sound as a reference for comparison, the EQ settings above are fairly consistent “ballpark” settings. 1, and note how the EQ’ed piezo pickup plot at the bottom is much closer to the miked sound. High parametric stage: Lifts the upper mids a bit around 3.1kHz.Lo Mid parametric stage: Cuts around 460 Hz.Lowpass filter: This reduces highs starting at around 9.3 kHz with a gentler, 18 dB/octave slope.Highpass filter: A steep, 30dB/octave slope rolls off lows starting at around 116 Hz.2: Cakewalk SONAR’s ProChannel EQ is using five EQ bands to tame the raw piezo pickup output. However, EQ can tailor the sound of an acoustic guitar’s piezo pickup. You can’t make a piezo pickup sound exactly like a miked acoustic guitar, because the physics of the transducers are so different. This is because the miked version occupies a narrower part of the frequency spectrum. These differences are why a miked acoustic guitar often “sits” better in a track than one recorded with a piezo pickup. Finally, in the miked acoustic guitar spectrum, there’s a bit more energy in the upper mids. Also, the piezo pickup’s high frequencies are more pronounced because piezo pickups tend to have a natural brightness. The acoustic guitar piezo pickup not only misses the bump’s peak, but the frequency response extends much lower, giving a “boomy” sound. You should also note that there is also a slightly higher-frequency dip above this bump. This corresponds to the guitar body’s “acoustic filtering.” Virtually any acoustic guitar exhibits a characteristic low-frequency bump, and capturing that bump is part of the sound. In the output of the miked guitar, note the major boost around 165 Hz. The top is the miked sound, the middle is the piezo pickup sound, and the bottom is the piezo pickup sound after being processed by EQ as described later. Ig.1: Three spectra from a Gibson J-45 acoustic guitar. 1 shows a miked acoustic guitar and it’s spectrum, while the middle plot shows the unprocessed piezo pickup’s spectrum. Fortunately, properly-applied EQ can tame the piezo pickup’s sound and make it more realistic.Īcoustic Piezo Pickups - Comparing Frequency Responses In some ways, an acoustic guitar piezo pickup is too accurate because it doesn’t discriminate in what it picks up. I just finished a live recording where the player was using an acoustic guitar with a piezo pickup – and every time I hear a piezo pickup, the first thing I want to do is grab a parametric EQ and make it sound like a real guitar! The output of an acoustic piezo pickup doesn’t sound like what you’d hear when listening to a guitar in a room, but at the same time it doesn’t sound like a miked guitar either. Anderton | MaBetter Sound from Acoustic Guitar Piezo Pickups Don't settle for a less-than-the-best acoustic guitar sound
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