don hindenach
2015-03-15 05:27:49 UTC
A few years back I got a jones to try a reso, so I picked up a Republic Parlour wood-body and fiddled it into reasonable shape. It was fun. So when I had a few extra bucks I took a chance on a budding builder in Michigan and got a mild-steel bisquit-bridge reso from him. It's pretty cool. Has it's own sound and it is a Good One. Again, I had to Do Things to get it into useable shape but it was well worth it.
Along the way a buddy and I tried putting the K&K reso pickup in his steel National and my wood cheapo. ew. Their idea of a good time is to epoxy and washer to a piezo pickup ring and screw the assembly down to the top of the bridge-plate. The sound is tinny and weak and ratty. So if you crank the gain and EQ all the treble out that you can it's "good enough". I guess. I've looked around, and it seems that some variation of this is what they all do unless they put a tele pickup in the cover plate.
My daughter Chelsea plays the appalachian lap dulcimer. She has a wonderful instrument built by Jerry Rockwell. These are generally pretty quiet instruments. So I went looking and looking and looking, and found a guy named Mike Clemmer who builds a dobro-based lap dulcimer. Actually orders dobro cones and bridges from the company and builds the thing around them. It's glorious, and his price is Very Reasonable. We all chipped in and got her one for this last christmas and she's thrilled. When we played just after she got it, she could put the sound right in there w/o having to plug in just to get close to an unplugged guitar.
We were playing about with string gauges to develope a set for her new tool, and I got really tired of futzing with the cheap tailpiece and the way the strings were strung. So I went looking for a string-thru tailpiece and found this: http://www.allenguitar.com/tpcs_rs-2.htm A solid-brass tailpiece. Hmmm. Things were going well with the business, so I ordered three of them. I am sooo glad I did, 'cause I would have had to order more instantly after installing the first one. Turned my cheapo cardboard Republic into sounding almost like there's some solid wood in there. Turned the mild-steel reso into a Whole New Instrument - louder, more resonant, livelier, and prettier. And Chelsea's new reso dulcimer got at least twice as loud and twice as lively. Great fun!
Chelsea and I have been trying to get away for a music weekend once a year, and this year we are trying a weekend at my house and calling it Music Therapy Weekend. This got me thinking about pickups again, as Saturday evening might get a bit loud :-)
Seems most everyone out there is putting a passive reso pickup right on the bisquit itself or trapped under the screw that holds the cone to the bridge assembly. Those are all going to have the same effect we got when we put those pickups on ours - ratty, thin, and tinny and turn the treble down and it's "good enough, I guess".
The only other variations I have yet seen are either tele pickups in the coverplate or what the guy did that made the dobro-based dulcimer we all gave Chelsea for christmas.
He took a cheap single piezo element and hot-glued it right to the cone. He calls it "buffering the pickup", and it does just what you'd think - it's really weak and really dull. Just the opposite tonally of what we got with the K&K. The hot glue drags all the life right out of it.
Sheesh.
So I got thinking, of course, and decided that having just an element on the bridge or cone will be just too much treble. But adding a body element not only helps a bit by adding a second sensor spot that hopefully balances the tone, but the sensors also load each other a bit and something in my intuition decided that is necessary.
Here is what I tried:
First thing is I peeled the hot glue and cheap pickup off the dobro cone (that scared me, but it needed done) and tossed it. Then Chelsea and I got to poking around the instrument with a pencil jammed up to our ear and the eraser end touching various parts of the cone and body. Discovered the liveliest part of the cone and the only place on the body we could stick the other element. I then took a dual-large-element K&K Big Twin I had laying around and super-glued one to the cone and the other to the body spot.
Hot DAMN! Fucking lovely. The only downside is when it's turned up really far you get a body-clunk. Chelsea hates that part, but I figure if she's turned up that far she's in a prety loud situation and we all just enjoy the added percussion and keep jamming.
So tonight I tried the same trick on both my reso instruments.
On the wood one I pulled the pickup off the bridgeplate and stuck it to the body and added a large-sized single additional pickup glued to the cone up pretty close to the bridge as things were livelier there than elswhere on the cone. All echoey and fun. Plugged in, it now needs zero EQ and it's easy to get lost in.
With the steel one I started from scratch. With the cone one I put it same place roughly as with the wood instrument, but I put the body element right on the inside of the back near the middle. Again, I played about and that was the liveliest spot I could reach without splicing wire on the pickup lead. Holy Shit it's fun. Talk about getting lost in the sound . . . . . it just echoes forever.
Here is the down side: since I chose in all cases for the liveliest spots, I am getting a lot of body noise when I move around. And I get a lot of guitar thru the pickup - nothing 'pure' about the sound. It's raw and wonderful and detailed and no fucking EQ, but there exists an extraneous element. (I've been the only one heard it besides my wife Pat so far, and she's all "yup, that sounds like you playing a guitar". So I have no idea how much sidenoise is really getting out there.)
So if you want to try my idea (I'm claiming it as original, as when I even try to talk about it with the pros out there I get yelled down before I can even get 1/4-way thru the concept - they got it all figured out, y'see) you will definitely want to listen and go thru the process and make your own guesses on what you'll be enjoying.
The only thing I can promise is that the two-element system I just did three installs of has lots and lots of sound and ain't tinny, ratty, or dull :-)
There ya go. The reso tweak of the week is the Allen RS-2 and K&K Big Twin with the donh placement option. Fun forever!
Along the way a buddy and I tried putting the K&K reso pickup in his steel National and my wood cheapo. ew. Their idea of a good time is to epoxy and washer to a piezo pickup ring and screw the assembly down to the top of the bridge-plate. The sound is tinny and weak and ratty. So if you crank the gain and EQ all the treble out that you can it's "good enough". I guess. I've looked around, and it seems that some variation of this is what they all do unless they put a tele pickup in the cover plate.
My daughter Chelsea plays the appalachian lap dulcimer. She has a wonderful instrument built by Jerry Rockwell. These are generally pretty quiet instruments. So I went looking and looking and looking, and found a guy named Mike Clemmer who builds a dobro-based lap dulcimer. Actually orders dobro cones and bridges from the company and builds the thing around them. It's glorious, and his price is Very Reasonable. We all chipped in and got her one for this last christmas and she's thrilled. When we played just after she got it, she could put the sound right in there w/o having to plug in just to get close to an unplugged guitar.
We were playing about with string gauges to develope a set for her new tool, and I got really tired of futzing with the cheap tailpiece and the way the strings were strung. So I went looking for a string-thru tailpiece and found this: http://www.allenguitar.com/tpcs_rs-2.htm A solid-brass tailpiece. Hmmm. Things were going well with the business, so I ordered three of them. I am sooo glad I did, 'cause I would have had to order more instantly after installing the first one. Turned my cheapo cardboard Republic into sounding almost like there's some solid wood in there. Turned the mild-steel reso into a Whole New Instrument - louder, more resonant, livelier, and prettier. And Chelsea's new reso dulcimer got at least twice as loud and twice as lively. Great fun!
Chelsea and I have been trying to get away for a music weekend once a year, and this year we are trying a weekend at my house and calling it Music Therapy Weekend. This got me thinking about pickups again, as Saturday evening might get a bit loud :-)
Seems most everyone out there is putting a passive reso pickup right on the bisquit itself or trapped under the screw that holds the cone to the bridge assembly. Those are all going to have the same effect we got when we put those pickups on ours - ratty, thin, and tinny and turn the treble down and it's "good enough, I guess".
The only other variations I have yet seen are either tele pickups in the coverplate or what the guy did that made the dobro-based dulcimer we all gave Chelsea for christmas.
He took a cheap single piezo element and hot-glued it right to the cone. He calls it "buffering the pickup", and it does just what you'd think - it's really weak and really dull. Just the opposite tonally of what we got with the K&K. The hot glue drags all the life right out of it.
Sheesh.
So I got thinking, of course, and decided that having just an element on the bridge or cone will be just too much treble. But adding a body element not only helps a bit by adding a second sensor spot that hopefully balances the tone, but the sensors also load each other a bit and something in my intuition decided that is necessary.
Here is what I tried:
First thing is I peeled the hot glue and cheap pickup off the dobro cone (that scared me, but it needed done) and tossed it. Then Chelsea and I got to poking around the instrument with a pencil jammed up to our ear and the eraser end touching various parts of the cone and body. Discovered the liveliest part of the cone and the only place on the body we could stick the other element. I then took a dual-large-element K&K Big Twin I had laying around and super-glued one to the cone and the other to the body spot.
Hot DAMN! Fucking lovely. The only downside is when it's turned up really far you get a body-clunk. Chelsea hates that part, but I figure if she's turned up that far she's in a prety loud situation and we all just enjoy the added percussion and keep jamming.
So tonight I tried the same trick on both my reso instruments.
On the wood one I pulled the pickup off the bridgeplate and stuck it to the body and added a large-sized single additional pickup glued to the cone up pretty close to the bridge as things were livelier there than elswhere on the cone. All echoey and fun. Plugged in, it now needs zero EQ and it's easy to get lost in.
With the steel one I started from scratch. With the cone one I put it same place roughly as with the wood instrument, but I put the body element right on the inside of the back near the middle. Again, I played about and that was the liveliest spot I could reach without splicing wire on the pickup lead. Holy Shit it's fun. Talk about getting lost in the sound . . . . . it just echoes forever.
Here is the down side: since I chose in all cases for the liveliest spots, I am getting a lot of body noise when I move around. And I get a lot of guitar thru the pickup - nothing 'pure' about the sound. It's raw and wonderful and detailed and no fucking EQ, but there exists an extraneous element. (I've been the only one heard it besides my wife Pat so far, and she's all "yup, that sounds like you playing a guitar". So I have no idea how much sidenoise is really getting out there.)
So if you want to try my idea (I'm claiming it as original, as when I even try to talk about it with the pros out there I get yelled down before I can even get 1/4-way thru the concept - they got it all figured out, y'see) you will definitely want to listen and go thru the process and make your own guesses on what you'll be enjoying.
The only thing I can promise is that the two-element system I just did three installs of has lots and lots of sound and ain't tinny, ratty, or dull :-)
There ya go. The reso tweak of the week is the Allen RS-2 and K&K Big Twin with the donh placement option. Fun forever!
--
-donh-
donh at audiosys dot com
-donh-
donh at audiosys dot com