Playing Acoustic Guitar Live

Most of you acoustic guitarist out there have the same frustrations as me: it's difficult to get a great live acoustic guitar tone.

My studio is equipped to produce wonderful acoustic sounds from my 6, 12, hi-string and classical guitars--as well as my mandolin--through great mic's and preamps. But I've always had to settle for second-rate, under-the-saddle tones live, even with on-board microphones. I'm still not fully satisfied. Don't jump to conclusions--I have great guitars with top-notch pickup systems. It's just that I can't coax a decent, authentic, full, studio-quality tone during a show.

I started my live acoustic journey like everyone else: clueless!  Back in 1973, at my first paying gig (a wedding, $35), I shoved a gigantic microphone into the sound-hole of my cheap Japanese dreadnought. Obviously, I fought feedback the whole time.

I grew as a player and jumped into the pro-world when I installed an L.R. Baggs under-the-sadle pickup with an on-board mixer onto my 1976 Martin D-28. It worked well, but the piezo artifacts in the overall sound still irked me. I eventually purchased a Lowden O25, put a Sunrise pickup in the sound hole, an L.R. Baggs under the saddle, and mixed it all together with a Pendulum Audio SPS-1 stereo preamp system. It was a very expensive way to bring my live acoustic tone quality to a decent level. Still, If you can believe it, I wasn't fully pleased.

I read an interview recently with James Taylor in Mix Magazine. Since I've seen JT in concert, and know first-hand the tone he demands from his guitar, I shut up and listen when he addresses his tone secrets. From the Mix interview, JT describes his current live acoustic challenges and solution:

"The Holy Grail of acoustic guitar for live performance is finding a way to get the artifacts out of the transducer. The slight buzz, the quack we’ve all experienced. They’re moving targets, and unfortunately you just can’t dial them out. To me it seems like there’s this little curve of phase cancellation followed by augmentation that occurs with each note, and it’s not static enough that you can find it easily. This is the major thing we’ve dealt with, and right now we have a pretty good handle on taming the problem using Fishman’s Aura acoustic-imaging blender."

I currently only take my Composite Acoustics GX Performer dreadnought out live. I love it! It has an L.R. Baggs iBeam mixer on board (you'd be extremely surprised how this guitar sounds in the air--it is physically light and resists the temptation to change it's tuning with drastic temperature fluctuations while getting it out of the car and into the venue). 

I've got the Fishman Aura 16 blender and agree with JT: it's the best solution for good live tone so far (you'll have to make your own judgement). I'm one step closer to live acoustic nirvana! Anything beats a microphone bouncing around the inside of my acoustic, just to get heard above the drums.