Weissenborn players; How do you amplify?

[John Neff]

Does anyone know David Lindley and Ben Harper's live Weissenborn setups? Do they use a Sunrise pickup? I have a GoldTone SM guitar, and I've been using the GoldTone/Dean Markley 3 way pickup system which incorporates a mic, a piezo transducer, and a magnetic pickup. I've found the mic to be useless on stage due to feedback. The piezo sounds good, but very bright and reedy sounding, not doing the low strings justice. The magnetic pickup, again, favors the 2 high unwound strings because I've been using bronze wound resonator strings. Is this my problem? Are steel wound strings the answer? I guess I could have tried 'em before posting this. What do YOU do?

Thanks.

[Chris Battis]

I'm told by a mutual friend that Lindley has switched from Sunrise pickups to the Seymour Duncan "Mag-Mic".
http://www.seymourduncan.com/acoustic/mag-mic.php

[Ben Sims]

John,

The Goldtone/Dean Markley Trilogy system (if that's the one you are using) appears to have adjustable pole pieces on the magnetic pickup. You should be able to even out the volume of the strings by screwing the pole pieces in or out as needed (a little bit at a time!). The volume difference you hear probably just has to do with the unwound strings being much heavier in a resonator guitar set than in a normal acoustic set. Acoustic guitar pickups are designed to work with bronze-wound strings, so that in itself is not the problem.

As far as preferences for Weissenborn amplification, I have used the Baggs M1 Active pickup and it sounds great. Did have to adjust those pole pieces though!

[Olli Haavisto]

Hi John,

Sunrises with the Sunrise buffer box. I guess other boxes work too but the Sunrise works with two 9 volt batteries and there`s just something about it....
Tried Fishman Rare Earth, like the Sunrise better.
Would like to try the Baggs M1 and the Duncan.
I`ve removed the screw under the "B" string to balance the sound.

Hope this helps!

[Rickey Mitchell]

Hi John, I dealt with the same issue a few years ago. I actually got a chance to ask Mr.Dave what pick up he used ion his weissenborn and his answer was Sunrise which sale for about $300 at the Berkley music instrument exchange in of course Berkley Ca. I tried one out and I loved it, I also tried out the LL Bags M1 non active pick up which I also loved and purchased for half the price, then I bought the LLbags Para DI preamp which I now run all my acoustic instruments through.I plug into a a 100 acoustic roland amp which I got for a very good price and I love the sound. If you can pick up a Roland Jazz Chorus 120 amp, do so their excellent and there great. It's what Mr, Dave uses and there's a good
reason why.
Below is an excerpt from an excellent interview with David Lindley by Paul Kotapish from Acoustic Guitar
hope this helps it helped me.

Lindley can fill a huge hall with the sound of a single acoustic instrument, and he’s refined his stage setup to a very reliable rig. "I run the basic line from the instruments through a splitter box that a friend of mine made for me," he explains. "I run half of the signal through a reworked Ashly preamp that has a Klark Teknik graphic EQ loop in it so it’s ultimately controllable for frequencies. The other half goes into an old Roland Jazz Chorus 120 amp, which has a mic on each of the two speakers. It’s mixed to the house with the direct signal in the center and the JC 120 speaker mics split left and right. The signals don’t get to the audience’s ears at the same time, and it makes a huge sound.

"My friend Max says, ‘Why do you change instruments so often when they all go through the same amp with the same chorus and they come out the same?’ I was about to say, ‘Screw you, Max,’ when I realized, ‘Damn, they do all sound the same.’ It’s not really true, but in a way it is, so I’ve been trying other variations. But basically I like the way it sounds.

"When you have a piezoelectric instrument plugged directly into the board it sounds like a dentist drill. Nnnnnrrrrrrrr! Have mercy with that! It’s effective on some things, but it gets real abrasive, so you have to soften it up. Sometimes it’s not as pure a sound as you’d like, but to get a really pure amplified sound is almost impossible. Ultimately it boils down to speakers and amps, and it’s very difficult to get the real thing through that, so you settle for the next best thing: the bigger-than-life Leo Kottke sound. First time I saw Kottke play, he had a magnetic pickup going into an amp and a piezoelectric signal too. I was blown away and I asked him, ‘What do you call that?’ He said, ‘Bigger than life.’"
http://www.acousticguitar.com/issues/ag90/gear90.shtml

[John Neff]

All of these replies have been very helpful, so thanks, Chris, Ben, Olli, and Rickey! I ordered a Mag-Mic from Seymour Duncan today, and I guess I'll go with a standard set of bronze wound guitar strings. I've been tuning low to high; DADF#AD, so waddya think? 12s?

[Brad Bechtel]

A string set from .12 to .52 should be just fine, although I'd personally use something like .13 to .56 for that tuning.

If you notice an unequal volume between strings, with the first two strings sounding much much louder than the others, you may want to use nickel wound instead of phosphor bronze. I've been using nickel wound strings on my tricone with a Lace Ultra Slim pickup and it works much better with that type of strings.

[Olli Haavisto]

The best electric string balance I`ve had while retaining the bronze acoustic tone was with a GHS set called the white bronze.
Check them out if they are still available.

[Erv Niehaus]

I play a Superior weissenborn.
I have two pickups on it, a Sunrise in the sound hole and a Baggs I-Beam mounted under the bridge inside the guitar.
I installed a stereo jack on the strap button.
I run a stereo cord into a Marshall acoustic amp.
This amp splits the signal into two channels and I can balance the pickups out via this means.
I get, to my ears anyway, an excellent sound and have gotten quite a few compliments.
Recently I purchased a Beard/Goldtone flat top, square necked, guitar and plan to put the same setup on that guitar.