acoustic set up for PRS P245 piezo pick up help please

[randyracer]

looking for better set up for my piezo . running straight through sounds ok but not as acoustic as i would like. any help would be great

[jroseberry]

There's a set of (free) Taylor acoustic guitar Impulse-Responses.  You can search this forum for a link.

Load those IRs into your Helix... use a little EQ and reverb.

Sounds amazingly good with piezo equipped guitars.

[rbum]

I tried the IRs that are often mentioned for piezo, but I don't like them in most cases. Maybe they are intended to be used with single-coil guitars, or for straight folk picking, but for me, they "ruin" the good piezo sounds of the Godin or PRS. I guess, it depends a lot on what kind of sound your are looking for. So for me it's like this:

 

I use a PRS P22 und two Godin guitars with piezos and I was looking for nice full percussive sounds for strumming in the back of "power ballads" or nice clear picking sounds in the verses ... but I use real rock sounds in the same patches as well, sometimes blending the sounds into another ... so for me this can only be achived with a fullrange speaker (I use line6 stagesource- but with cutting the harsh sound of the mags) or with two different outputs in an acoustic and a "normal" guitar speaker.

 

To have control over the bright sounds of the acoustic parts and the E-guitar sounds I found this way for me:
 

1. use both jacks, one for the mags, one for the piezo - doing this you get complete seperated sounds - no blending inside the guitar

2. use AUX or Return INPUT in Helix for piezo sound and the guitar input for mags

3. create different paths for piezo and mag inputs

4. use different outputs for the paths (I use 1/4 for piezo and xlr for mag), if you want a mixed output (additional) you get it from phones out (even with seperate volume)

5. use global EQ on xlr to cut lows at about 60hz and highs at about 6.7 hz  on the mags to your taste if you use Fullrange.

 

In the patches I use a dymanic compressor and then sometimes a studio preamp or a bass preamp for the piezo path. The amps and cabs don't work for real acoustice sounds. The input of  my PRS P22 is only half as loud compared to the Godins, so I need to use some gain to get a full sound at all. Sometines I don`t use a preamp at all and raise the level in the following blocks.

In all patches I use a chorus (some of them have a "tone"  knob, which is very helpfull to make the acoustic sound softer),   a short delay and a smal room or chamber, to start with. Sometimes a 10-channel eq before the delay. This way I get a wide range of acoustic sounds which I put in some templates and copy to my setlists when I start to create a new sound for a song.

Blending these sounds together with clear or distored E-guitar sounds is very easy possible using the different output blocks of the paths. The variety on very nice sound you get is impressive and using snapshots makes it so easy to go from acoustic picking over clear floating E-guitar sounds to high gain solo parts in a songs or a split second, if needed. But sure, it takes some time to tweak the patches...

 

One last thing: be aware, that all sounds are very different at "living-room-level" or at live-performance-level.  So the piezo sounds can get very hight and too bright, when you pump up the volume of the speakers / Helix - better try this at live level before you think, you are done.

[randyracer]

thanks for the help guys. rbum i am finding the same as you, the downloads i have tried are coming up short on the acoustic sound. my PRS sounds better running straight through with no amp. i worked on it all afternoon yesterday and think im getting close. i will post set up when i find it lol

 

thanks again

randy

[vmoncebaiz]

I've only gotten to mess around with non-variax piezos a small amount with Helix So far I prefer the tube-pre block to most of the acoustic IRs i've found.  There are a couple of the IRs that do sound very good though, especially if you roll off high end and low end as mentioned above.

 

I recommend using the return inputs over the Aux input.  It feels better and sounds better to me. Then you can set up separate signal paths or insert the return anywhere in your first path if you want to save on DSP and use the same post effects or whatever.

 

You can also set Snapshots or Footswitches to bypass the amp and cab for use with the piezo, if you prefer to use a singal signal path.