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Need help with preset for acoustic with piezo pickup


gerryCol
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Hello. I have a question regarding I RS. I purchased the Acoustic Essentials from 3 Sigma. and a few other developersI have a Takamine G series acoustic with a Piezo pickup that sounds fine through the board on its own, it's easy to manage but I was hoping for a bigger better sound and thought this may be the answer. I am using the Line 6 Stomp and when I import any of the IR's from these libraries the guitar sound is unusable. Extreme high end. My $1,200 Focal monitors sound like tin cans, no bass whatsoever. Is there a special way to use these IR, presets? I have tried tweaking them endlessly and backing them way off in the mix. it seems I'm spending more time trying to get these I IR's to work before I just give up. I have to be missing something. Can you someone help me with this. I need a good full strumming acoustic preset for an acoustic guitar with a Piezo pickup. Thanks. Please help!

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I have struggled with this and I think many others have as well.  I have a better than decent acoustic guitar patch now that I like on my Floor Helix but it requires using 2 IRs.  I found that mixing a Martin D45 sound hole IR and a D45 electric/acoustic IR (both 3 Sigma) works pretty good and my band agrees 100%.  The electric/acoustic IR provides the tone mix a jangly treble that just brings it to life, it's the secret sauce but it is mixed sparingly.  I run them parallel and add a small amount of simple delay (5-10ms) after the electric/acoustic IR just on it's path.  I'll be glad to post the patch so you can look at it and/or play with it using your IRs.  I'm not familiar with the Helix Stomp or if you can load it?  My acoustic is a Martin D18 using a K&K Pure Mini under saddle pickup.

 

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  • 8 months later...

Hi Surfsup, 

Sorry i missed your reply to my post somehow. I would love to hear your patch, I have the same IR's. Funny you mentioned the K&K pure mini  pickup. I have the K&K Trinity ordered and should have it tomorrow. Great time to take your patch for a spin. 

Thank you and sorry for missing this to begin with,  just goes to show you how long I have been fighting with this one.

Gerry

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I have a Godin LGXT with Piezo and I have no trouble getting a very good sound with 3sigma acoustic IRs.

 

My patch has the piezo IR as first thing, followed by the studio pre, compressor, and parametric eq. In the eq I attenuate the low mids a bit and boost the highs to make the tone a bit more chimey. Then add chorus and/or delay and/or reverb to taste. It works well for me.

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I've found Jason Sadites formula for acoustic guitars to be pretty handy and flexible.  Some things have changed a bit since he made this video such as using the low/high shelf EQ rather than the split path model he's showing in this video which was what he was using before we got the low/high shelf EQ.  But his use of the 3 band compressor seems to fit my needs much more than any of the 3 sigma IRs.  Plus I can change it a bit so it works well when I go from flat picking to finger picking.  I also use a Takamine G series acoustic.


 

 

 

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4 hours ago, gerryCol said:

Hi Surfsup, 

Sorry i missed your reply to my post somehow. I would love to hear your patch, I have the same IR's. Funny you mentioned the K&K pure mini  pickup. I have the K&K Trinity ordered and should have it tomorrow. Great time to take your patch for a spin. 

Thank you and sorry for missing this to begin with,  just goes to show you how long I have been fighting with this one.

Gerry

 

Hey Gerry, as is typical, my main acoustic preset has morphed into something different than what i described above, which I now prefer.  It still requires 3 Sigma IRs.  Also I have had a chance to piddle around with an HX Stomp (my son bought one) and I know for a fact you can't use a Helix Floor preset in your HX as it doesn't have the dual DSP paths.  However, I will be glad to send.

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2 hours ago, surfsup1955 said:

...

I know for a fact you can't use a Helix Floor preset in your HX as it doesn't have the dual DSP paths.  However, I will be glad to send.


Just to clarify, you can import a single path Helix Floor preset into HX Stomp. You’re correct that you can’t use a dual path preset.

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1 hour ago, silverhead said:


Just to clarify, you can import a single path Helix Floor preset into HX Stomp. You’re correct that you can’t use a dual path preset.

 

Thanks, I didn't know that.  This means my son and I can swap presets, awesome!  However, my preset in this discussion is using both paths.  

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Actually it is a bit more restrictive than I said earlier because HX Stomp has a limit of 8 blocks (used to be 6). Sorry for the misinformation. I presume the following statement from the HX Stomp FAQ sheet should be revised upwards as of firmware v3.0:

 

Can HX Stomp load Helix Floor, Helix Rack/Control, Helix LT, or HX Effects presets?

As long as the preset has six or fewer blocks, you can use the latest version of HX Edit (2.70, out very soon) to access both devices at once and copy and paste blocks back and forth. Rebuilding a Helix preset in HX Stomp shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds.

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Hello there,

I have become a master at importing any Helix Patch I want into my HX Native via Pro tools and copying and pasting the exact blocks I want into my stomp via HX Edit. 
Now that I have 8 blocks there is very little I can't use. In my experience I have found that there are very few patches or presets where more than 8 blocks are being used at the same time.

With the Helix, obviously people take advantage of the additional snapshots and load multiple effects, eq's,  compressors etc. that are enabled and disabled within the Patch via snapshots but in my case this is never necessary and I can set up the Patch in any way I need to a make it work. If anyone needs help with this I can write it down step by step.

So share em' if you got em".

Just had a big snowstorm in NY and I will be hunkered down in my studio waiting for my K&K Trinity mic setup to arrive tomorrow, until then I will be practicing away on myTakamine. LOL

So please if anyone has got a patch they feel is good for strumming in particular. Please post it my way. Much appreciated!!!
 

I have A question for you Emagli, I have all the 3 Sigma IR's. do you have a patch that you could send me that works with strumming. The issue I have with IR's is I can't mix them in more than 20-25% max. I just hear phasing issues no matter what I try.

And thank you DunedinDragon, I saw Jason's Video a few months ago and saved all his settings in my Stomp exactly as he did and I agree, it is one of my best patches and actually I use it on a few tunes. 

 

Thanks again all of you,!!

Gerry C

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Gerry, I trimmed the preset to load up on HX Stomp (ver 3.0 or higher) and it's up on CustomTone:

 

https://line6.com/customtone/tone/5257476/

 

CustomTone comments:  IR used is 3 Sigma Mart 45 Soundhole 1b.  Guitar is a Martin D18 with a K&K Pure Mini pickup.  Typically tuned to Eb w/light gauge bronze strings using a medium pick.  Preset contains 3 snapshots EQ'd differently using the new Acoustic Sim on side chain.  Only 7 fx blocks, HX Stomp compatible.  Requires HX 3.0 or higher.

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21 hours ago, faidilarbi said:

Why doesn't the device run with me? toneport ux2 On the Windows 10 computer Knowing that he was working with me on a Windows 7 computer Is it possible to put the appropriate driver link for downloading?

line 6 monkey ?

GearBox ?

 

Did you intend for this post to go somewhere else?  I'm only asking because it has zero to do with this thread.  

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On 12/17/2020 at 6:23 PM, faidilarbi said:

Is it possible to put the appropriate driver link for downloading?


O.K. You appear to be lost. This is the wrong place to be asking about Toneport drivers, but let’s try to help you out.

 

Try this - Go to the "DOWNLOADS" menu at the top of this page and from the drop down menu "-ALL HARDWARE-" scroll down until you can select Toneport UX2, then from  "-ALL SOFTWARE-" select Drivers, next you should select Windows 10 from under the "-ALL OS-" tab, then click the “GO” button. 

 

From there you should be taken to the page where you can select the Driver version 4.2.7.7 Click the blue “GET DOWNLOAD” button. On the next page agree to the EULA, then you click on “Accept and Download”.

 

You should be able to find the latest Line 6 Monkey and Gearbox using the same dowloads page.

 

Good luck.

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On 12/17/2020 at 5:57 PM, gerryCol said:

I have A question for you Emagli, I have all the 3 Sigma IR's. do you have a patch that you could send me that works with strumming. The issue I have with IR's is I can't mix them in more than 20-25% max. I just hear phasing issues no matter what I try.

 

Sure, no problem. Have a look at the attached patch, snapshot1 (STRUMMING) (it should be the default one if I have not made any mistake while saving). The IR that I use with this is Taylor 612 piezo 1a. I am also attaching a short audio file to give you an idea of how it sounds like for me. It is the raw track with no postprocessing recorded in Garageband. Important: while recording this I kept the "high" eq slider on the guitar preamp relatively high -- that's where most of the highs are coming from; mids and lows are neutral on the preamp. This tone has some chorus, reverb and delay, and I am going for a slightly scooped sound to fit in an acoustic/electric song. YMMV.

 

 

acoustic.hlx acoustic.mp3

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On 12/17/2020 at 10:57 AM, gerryCol said:

I have all the 3 Sigma IR's.....

The issue I have with IR's is I can't mix them in more than 20-25% max. I just hear phasing issues no matter what I try.

 

Isn't this normal with acoustic IR's? Unlike cabinet IR's I find acoustic IR's should just be lightly blended in... I don't think I have any as high as 20-25%. In fairness, I do not own any 3 Sigma IR's... but I do own a few others, and I made a batch of my favorites from my Fishman Aura and even with the Aura hardware I never ran the blend very high. 

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8 hours ago, codamedia said:

 

Isn't this normal with acoustic IR's? Unlike cabinet IR's I find acoustic IR's should just be lightly blended in... I don't think I have any as high as 20-25%. In fairness, I do not own any 3 Sigma IR's... but I do own a few others, and I made a batch of my favorites from my Fishman Aura and even with the Aura hardware I never ran the blend very high. 

 

My experience has been similar. I have some 3Sigma as well as some other acoustic IRs and generally have to turn the blend down low. I have also gotten good results from not using an IR at all and just some compression, EQ, reverb/delay, and sometimes chorus blended in. Also always have an expression pedal volume block and also a gain block assigned to a footswitch for an extra volume boost for solos or a lower volume patch where required.  I find it helps to keep a healthy signal level coming from the acoustic guitar as well.

 

I have struggled with some presets picking up more string noise than I prefer but can usually EQ it down to acceptable levels or if those efforts are unsuccessful I  just create a new preset with blocks that play better with the acoustic.  Btw, anyone happen to know exactly where that bit of buzzy piezo nastiness is located? That area of the frequency spectrum that makes it sound more artificial and less pleasing to the ear. Some might say the "piezo quack" . I tend to sweep for it with a parametric and adjust per whichever guitar I am using but curious if anyone knows exactly where those frequencies tend to reside.

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16 hours ago, HonestOpinion said:

Btw, anyone happen to know exactly where that bit of buzzy piezo nastiness is located? That area of the frequency spectrum that makes it sound more artificial and less pleasing to the ear. Some might say the "piezo quack" . I tend to sweep for it with a parametric and adjust per whichever guitar I am using but curious if anyone knows exactly where those frequencies tend to reside.

 

Try sweeping a high Q (narrow) reduction between 750-850 hz.. I set the parametric EQ as my first fx block to get the best sound possible from my dry line in tone (guitar and pickup only), then I switch on the IRs.  I prefer 2 IRs in parallel, one with more bass and one with more mid/highs), then I use the IR block level settings to mix the tone.  I add the wet stuff last.  Works for me.     

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16 hours ago, surfsup1955 said:

... get the best sound possible from my dry line in tone (guitar and pickup only), then I switch on the IRs.  

.... then I use the IR block level settings to mix the tone.  I add the wet stuff last.  

 

YES! It's the all important first step... which is often overlooked. 

An IR cannot fix bad tone... it can only enhance an already good/great tone. 

 

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