The Steel Guitar Forum

Well, I took the plunge and got the Fishman JD pickup installed in my Goldtone PBS and bought the Aura pedal. I figured I'd pass on my thoughts.
I play in a loud country rock band (mainly electric but some steel and dobro) and of course had no way of hearing myself.
I bought everything through Beard (they installed the pickup in a new spider). I have never had such better service from any company. Andy at Beard answered all my questions and was a really nice gent.
The acoustic sound: I'm pretty new to the squareneck but from what I can tell, the bridge changes the acoustic tone (not good or bad), it just sounds "tighter" bandwidth-wise (less overtones). But this could be different on other resos and I'm still in the early stages of playing with this thing.
The electric sound: wonderful. I can hear myself! The blend knob is vital as you can dial in the mix of dry pickup with that of the Aura modeling. I assumed I'd use mainly, if not all, Aura but I was wrong. I find myself using mainly dry pickup and dialing in a bit of the Aura to give it that "reso" quality.
I am very, very happy with this setup and for me, it's absolutely worth the price to be able to hear myself. I've now started to save up for a real Beard squareneck (with Fishamn/Aura of course)!

I'm very happy with my Fishman/Aura set-up as well. Just a note to those considering this. It isn't cheap, but it is well worth it. Plan on spending about $1000 to put this system in with all the needed steps and outboard gear to run into a PA system.

Tom, could you give a rough breakdown of how the $1000 was spent? Thanks.

Erik Waynesmith recently posted this very well over at reso-nation. but here's my approx. break-down to get the guitar in shape to run into a PA system with a regular, working (i.e. loud) band:

Fishman JD pickup: 170.
Aura pedal: 250.
adjustable spider bridge #14 : 75.
endpin jack: 10.
Baggs Para Acoustic DI: 175.
high qual. cable: 20.
Dobro tech labor: 200.
shipping of guitar to and from set-up shop: 150.

You could probably short cut some of these costs, but
be careful about trying some of this work yourself. It is tricky. Good luck.

- Tom

I would point out 3 things:

1. End pin jack comes with the pickup.

2. If the pickup/Aura/Spider is bought from Beard Guitars there will be no installation labor.

3. If you have the Beard shop do the install you will have to pay shipping of the guitar both ways.

Full disclosure...I work for Paul Beard.

ymmv

h

Thanks guys.