Could you get a bari down to F# or E??
I borrowed a bari guitar once and had a bunch of metal guys desperate to know how I got a sound that brutal. It did sound heavier than a 7 string...

 

you can also use a sub n up pedal or a morpheus bomber pedal (too bad the inventor passed away)
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/morpheus-bomber

the sub n up

 

nice use of that ambigious zone between upper base and lower guitar
stanley clarke, east river drive

 

I wrote a little tune in that FACGCE thing today after @0on3 turned me on to it. Thanks!

 

Fishman makes a bridge with a piezo under the saddles already, it's not as easy as it sounds with adjustable saddles. If you want to get a solid sound right-away it probably best to just spend the money. It can get technical with a metal bridge and magnet right there, but hey it's an adventure. You could try a sound hole microphone or an under saddle mic, you going to need to route out some space for that. Sounds like a fun adventure if you don't mind tinkering and don't expect much.

The Fishman doesn't sound bad and you can wire for stereo out if you want external blend.

If you want a blend pot on the body it going to require some body mods if you have a top plate as there is almost no space for a third pot on the plate unless you delete the switch and go for a jazz bass type setup with a 4 pot + 1 mini switch setup PkBlend, PzBlend, Tone, Vol [Polarity SW] drilling through the back is always an option as well.

Sounds like a good time.

 

@Lois Lane ,
please see your Messages , i left you a present !

 

Yeah you can, some people use bass strings to keep the tension. But normally the scale length is longer than a 7 string, which probably explains the tonal difference.

 

Wow, a year is considered a long time?
I've guitars with decade old strings on them lol.

 

I've taken to cutting out the string brand and size from the string package and taping it on the back of the headstock and writing the date they were installed on there, and cover it with clear tape so it won't wear off.

I can never remember when i changed string or even what brand and size i used, so its handy when I like the strings and want to replace them, and just as handy when I hate them and don't want to use them again. some guitars sound good with dead strings. I've even got a box of high e strings to replace those when a string bend goes wrong and I don't want to change the entire set of strings..

 

Last edited: Feb 9, 2024

for an acoustic guitar, they tend to get a dead sound a lot faster than an electric guitar. its the treble rolloff from the accumulation of finger oil and skin and life. i've heard you can boil dead strings and bring them back to life, but I never tried it though I bet you could make some good soup from that.....................

I've got an acoustic bass that still has 3 original strings from when i purchased it a decade ago. don't want much treble on a bass I found out . had to replace the one string because it came to me missing a string....it stuck out like a new string for many months..

I lucked onto an unused factory replacement preamp and circuitry for an original fender telecaster acoustasonic guitar, the 1st one that looked like a telecaster with a rosewood ashtray bridge and and acoustic saddle, for a very good price, so its been sitting in my box of strange and wonderful guitar parts. If memory serves that was developed by fishman for fender, so the preamp and blend circuitry are fishman.
I've put a couple piezo's in my guitars so i've monkeyed with them a bit, and like the sound, a good compressor will reduce the squack when you hit the string hard, really the only thing i find troubling about piezo's. I've used the ovation with the segmented piezo (1 per string) and the single piezo for all strings and can't hear the difference, so I'm probably gonna go with a flexible piezo under the steel ashtray with a small route out of the wood to accomadated the piezo.

this guy sounds a little like Kermit the frog, but he shows the principle. he's using a thin film piezo for his pickup.

 

yeah i researched it for a while and I got a Telecaster thinline knockoff as my axe victim. since its already hollow on one side It will make installing the preamp much simpler, and it has the controls on the pickguard like a strat, so it will be easy to swap out the volume pot for a stacked volume/blend pot. Still gotta cut a hole for the blend circuit board and the battery box.
and have to replace the original output for the stereo,,, but much easier than going at it from scratch.

 

I have my classic guitar since around 2007. So it will be around 17 years now.
And I replaced 2 strings just the last year when they finally broke from abrasion and rust

 

Old strings? This here is Mark O'Conner, one of our great musicians living on the planet, and this is Mark's 1945 Martin D-28 with 20 year old strings on it. He plays guitar as you can plainly and obviously see, and of course is a virtuoso at it...but guitar is NOT his best instrument. He's a fiddle player first and he's amazing. He won the guitar Flatpicking Championship as a teenager and went on to fill Tony Rice's HUGE shoes in the David Grissman Quartet. He hung up his guitar in about 2001 because of bursitis and focused soley on his violin playing. This video is of him after that 20 years and always blows me away. The next Mark is playing fiddle with just about the very best ever bluegrass musicians that ever broke a string. Tony Rice on guitar can't be beat. He inherited Clarence White's D-18 when he tragically died.

 

I met Mark once at a Dregs show. Nicest dude on the planet. I have a Takamine acoustic and the strings are at least 5 years old. It sounds just fine and it's settled in- I know when I mic it it's going to sound completely consistent. And the tuning holds.

 

Here's a little demo of the FACGCE thing I did.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/umph...dle.flac?rlkey=ttbh8c81jf1om0dz81nzh4kk9&dl=0

 

with 1 string it's more than enough at any tune... it's all the same..

 

LoL..That's NOT it. That's a thing I did to noodle around on piano...and the piano certainly isn't tuned to F#. Sorry about that. As soon as I get into the studio will upload it.

 

I like it but, consider this, it may sound crazy but you know.. cut the intro off and flip it so its backwards audio and put it somewhere in the middle to break the flow and add a repeat or 2 at the end of the phrase and cross fade it back into the piece as it continues.

I like the atmosphere,but it lacks energy or tension, and i think that breaking the piece with the vocal and then returning to it might be interesting, then again i could totally be full of shit, but its easy to do with a daw these days...

 

This should be it now...
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3067...-Fun.wav?rlkey=6un6pkqkuftrazwoiknneme7z&dl=0