Chords for Real-World Rigs From Acoustic Guitar - Nina Gerber

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_ _ _ _ [N] Hey there, I'm Nina Gerber and I'm here to talk about my acoustic guitar on stage performing
rig. _
Starting out with the most important thing is a guitar.
This is a Froggy Bottom
guitar built in Vermont and it's their Jumbo model.
Of course I don't know the exact model
number but you can tell it's Jumbo.
I have the Highlander IP2 pickup system.
I've got
a saddle pickup here and an internal microphone clipped to the back brace there.
[D] They're wired
[E] and they have a stereo out and it [D#] comes out the end pin.
Then we're connected to a pendulum
preamp, a stereo preamp, SPS-1 I believe.
This module here goes from the guitar to the
preamp and if you can see it's got a balance knob so you can balance a little bit between
the pickup and the mic and it has volume control.
_ [D] This goes into the back of the preamp _ and
splits the signal so I wind up with [B] a separate EQ channel for the pickup and for the microphone.
I've got a three band parametric EQ for each channel.
_ I kind of treat the sound the way I
need to here and then I'll send the two separate lines to the house system so that the sound guy
can mix the two signals together so that it sounds like a big awesome acoustic guitar only loud.
_ Then when it comes to the monitors what I can do by sending him to the two separate lines is
he can send me usually more pickup in the monitor, a little bit of microphone so that it sounds more
natural but I probably get a little bit more pickup in the monitor so I don't have to worry
about feedback problems.
_ _ Also for my own monitoring system I have an AER amp and I take just the pickup
monitor out of the _ pendulum preamp and go into the AER so that just what's coming out of here
is just my pickup, my guitar, nobody else in the way.
If I'm not getting enough of my guitar in
the front monitors I'm able to fill up the sound I need with the AER amp. _
_ Then I do have an old
Rocktron Intel FX _ effects unit that basically I'm just using reverb on it and every once in a
while I'll put a little bit of chorus on it to kind of fatten things up or if we're out of tune
and the chorus helps a little bit. _ _
What else we got?
So what's important for me the pendulum preamp
is just a high-end, high-dollar piece of gear.
It's the best preamp that I've found so far where
you don't really hear the sound get cheapened or treated differently once you go into the preamp.
It has a great parametric EQ for each channel and that way I can dial out the pickup.
It tends to
be kind of boingy sounding _ and what I found is if you kind of take around 700 Hertz [N] and yank that
out a lot then it takes away the boing factor a little bit and it starts sounding a little bit
more natural.
And then the microphone channel, microphones can always be a problem with feedback
so you want to have a good amount of EQ available to try to work with that if you need to. _
In my
opinion the microphone is what's going to make the guitar sound as natural as possible so I'm
going to try to lead with the mic in the house mix.
I always try to get maybe at least you know
70% microphone as opposed to the pickup.
Pickup kind of gives it that a little bit of edge and
drive, a little bit more sustain which is really nice to have especially on more bluesy songs and
stuff.
But the microphone is what gives it the quality of you know the wooden quality of the
guitar and you get the air and just you get all the natural elements that make it sound like an
acoustic guitar instead of a _ funky sounding acoustic guitar.
_ Another EQ thing to think about
is the microphone tends to get kind of bassy sometimes, a little boomy sounding and so that's
the frequency I might mess with a fair amount depending on the room, how big it is, how live
the room is.
I'll kind of tweak usually between like a hundred and one sixty is a good place to
kind of turn down a little bit.
It varies from guitar to guitar _ but that's a frequency to kind
of pay attention to if things get a little bit too boomy and things can get kind of high-end
and harsh on the pickup as well so you want to kind of roll off some of the higher frequencies
of that.
But that's about it, it's not rocket science it's just you know good equipment.
_ _ So
we're at the AG studios and we'll see if it sounds as good as I'm saying it [A] does.
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