Post by soundout on Sept 15, 2018 18:35:42 GMT
Have you heard about the ToneDexter yet? Seems like all the top USA acoustic players are switching to this. Terms like ‘game-changer’ are being bandied about. Justified, or another expensive box to gather dust? I think it’s a game-changer.
My attention was drawn to this preamp by an excellent article in Sound on Sound magazine by my old buddy Bob Thomas, late of Silly Wizard. Since the demise of that band many years ago, Bob has been involved in all sorts of high end, esoteric sound equipment and he really knows what he’s talking about. So when he recommended the ToneDexter by Audio Sprockets, I took notice.
Like me, Bob has for many years relied on a twin-channel setup using on-board microphones and pickups through two-channel preamps on the floor. Absolutely no denying the quality of sound achievable this way and, if you use high-end cardioid microphones, it’s easily possible to get a high level of mic in your mix, even in the monitors, before getting feedback. The drawbacks are that some tweaking is essential when changing instruments (not always easy in the turmoil of a festival gig), and the actual cost of equipping all your instruments with mics of sufficient quality, which can be more expensive than the results justify.
My own current setup is Raven Labs preamp, K&K Pure Mini pickups, and Crown GLM200 mics, as sold by Fishman some years back. A fabulous sound, but the Raven Labs (and its successor, the d-Tar Solstice) are now discontinued. The Fishman version of the Crown mic (with open tails to wire into your endpin jack, rather than the full version with xlr connector/phantom power transformer) was expensive enough at about £100, but now the only way to get one of these is to buy a Countryman l2 mic at a whopping 365 dollars, then discard the xlr end so as to wire it in to your instrument. Far too pricey!
So the time is right for a new way to get a musical combination of pickup and mic sound. But isn’t that what the Fishman Aura system is all about? Well, yes, but the ToneDexter is genuinely different.
In layman’s terms, this is what it does. It records and processes an image response (called a wavemap), of your own guitar played through your own microphone. Then, using geeky science which we mortals don’t understand, you leave your microphone at home and blend the stored wavemap in the ToneDexter with your pickup sound. All you need inside the guitar is your regular pickup. The relatively budget K&K Pure Mini is recommended, but any passive or active pickup will work.
This is what it doesn’t do: it doesn’t give you separate mic and pickup channels (clearly, as your pickup is merely emulating the mic sound via the wavemap). It doesn’t give you one completely pickup setting and one completely mic setting, for the same reasons.
It does however give you a choice of various blends of pickup/mic emulation, bass and treble controls, and a notch filter in the event of feedback. A boost switch (adjustable) is there for solos. It gives you a mute/tuner function, a phase switch and the ability to have a fixed or variable DI output - no further boxes needed.
What’s it like to use in real life? Well, it’s REALLY easy to play your mic wavemap into the box, one or more for each instrument you have. Via headphones, you can hear what is changing as you play the signal in, and you can make sure your mic position is best for the given instrument. You can store up to 22 wavemaps for your different instruments, and you can copy and paste between wavemap slots to organise them for gigging. It gives you a choice between slot 22, the most realistic mic emulation, and the others, which go through the same process but then automatically apply some feedback correction for you. Slot 22 wavemaps sound the best and can be copied to other slots. I’ve put a slot 22 wavemap and a feedback-corrected version into adjacent slots on the preamp for each guitar, so I can try the ‘natural version’ first, then switch to the corrected version if I get problems.
What does it sound like? Amazing! I wouldn’t have believed such a sound possible from any pickup/preamp, and believe me, in my summer job as a festival sound engineer, I’ve listened to everything on the market and tried to get a good sound. Today I put the signal through my studio monitors for the first time, having set everything up on headphones, and I was blown away. Clearly, it has absorbed the acoustic characteristics of instrument and microphone and combined them in a very musical way. The wavemaps it has made for two of my guitars are clearly different and emphasise what is good about each one. If I use the wavemap of one guitar for the other one, it does not respond as well, and therefore the wavemaps are clearly tailored to the individual guitar/mic/pickup combination.
And therein, perhaps, lies the reason why the Fishman Aura system never caught on in a big way. My limited Aura experience showed me that for a given guitar, very few of the Aura presets/samples gave me a pleasing sound. Perhaps because they were not based on the actual instruments to which they were subsequently applied. Seems like the ToneDexter really does take into account the individual instrument/pickup/mic combination used.
I have yet to try using this with my own gigging guitars through a big PA system, so my caveat would be the possibility of feedback. I did quickly run my fairly grotty camping session guitar with fairly grotty pickup through my festival PA last weekend. I got it to feed back by running it loud right in front of the FOH speakers, but the notch filter quickly sorted it out. One performer, Charlotte Carrivick, turned up with a ToneDexter and her own wavemap, which needed only minimal eq’ing on the PA and sounded warm and realistic. I could push the volume for her amazing solo flatpicking without fear of feedback.
My own preferred twin channel sound uses the pickup signal for warmth and body, and the mic signal for high-end sparkle. I easily achieved that mix on the ToneDexter by using a small diaphragm SE condenser on a hypercardioid setting, positioned up the neck. By using different mics and different positioning, there’s no reason you couldn’t achieve whatever sound you’re after using this preamp. You only need the mic to quickly play in the signal, so it shouldn’t be too hard to beg or borrow various mics to experiment with, even if you don’t own such mics already. Multiple guitars, wavemaps and pickup types can be therefore used on stage with quick, muted changeovers with just one box in front of you.
I’ll be keeping my twin-channel setup for a while until I’ve tried this out on real big gigs (bearing my sparse diary in mind, I might have to wait until next festival season for that, lol). I’m pretty sure that the ToneDexter is a quantum leap towards the holy grail of an accurate, fully adjustable, quality acoustic guitar pickup sound. It can also save money compared with having to equip each instrument with an expensive onboard microphone.
Here’s a link to more info. Strangely, the first video demo from Doug Young starts from a first-class pickup sound, so the ToneDexter effect is relatively subtle. The other videos further down the page let you hear more clearly exactly what is going on. audiosprockets.com/tonedexter/
Go for it folks!
My attention was drawn to this preamp by an excellent article in Sound on Sound magazine by my old buddy Bob Thomas, late of Silly Wizard. Since the demise of that band many years ago, Bob has been involved in all sorts of high end, esoteric sound equipment and he really knows what he’s talking about. So when he recommended the ToneDexter by Audio Sprockets, I took notice.
Like me, Bob has for many years relied on a twin-channel setup using on-board microphones and pickups through two-channel preamps on the floor. Absolutely no denying the quality of sound achievable this way and, if you use high-end cardioid microphones, it’s easily possible to get a high level of mic in your mix, even in the monitors, before getting feedback. The drawbacks are that some tweaking is essential when changing instruments (not always easy in the turmoil of a festival gig), and the actual cost of equipping all your instruments with mics of sufficient quality, which can be more expensive than the results justify.
My own current setup is Raven Labs preamp, K&K Pure Mini pickups, and Crown GLM200 mics, as sold by Fishman some years back. A fabulous sound, but the Raven Labs (and its successor, the d-Tar Solstice) are now discontinued. The Fishman version of the Crown mic (with open tails to wire into your endpin jack, rather than the full version with xlr connector/phantom power transformer) was expensive enough at about £100, but now the only way to get one of these is to buy a Countryman l2 mic at a whopping 365 dollars, then discard the xlr end so as to wire it in to your instrument. Far too pricey!
So the time is right for a new way to get a musical combination of pickup and mic sound. But isn’t that what the Fishman Aura system is all about? Well, yes, but the ToneDexter is genuinely different.
In layman’s terms, this is what it does. It records and processes an image response (called a wavemap), of your own guitar played through your own microphone. Then, using geeky science which we mortals don’t understand, you leave your microphone at home and blend the stored wavemap in the ToneDexter with your pickup sound. All you need inside the guitar is your regular pickup. The relatively budget K&K Pure Mini is recommended, but any passive or active pickup will work.
This is what it doesn’t do: it doesn’t give you separate mic and pickup channels (clearly, as your pickup is merely emulating the mic sound via the wavemap). It doesn’t give you one completely pickup setting and one completely mic setting, for the same reasons.
It does however give you a choice of various blends of pickup/mic emulation, bass and treble controls, and a notch filter in the event of feedback. A boost switch (adjustable) is there for solos. It gives you a mute/tuner function, a phase switch and the ability to have a fixed or variable DI output - no further boxes needed.
What’s it like to use in real life? Well, it’s REALLY easy to play your mic wavemap into the box, one or more for each instrument you have. Via headphones, you can hear what is changing as you play the signal in, and you can make sure your mic position is best for the given instrument. You can store up to 22 wavemaps for your different instruments, and you can copy and paste between wavemap slots to organise them for gigging. It gives you a choice between slot 22, the most realistic mic emulation, and the others, which go through the same process but then automatically apply some feedback correction for you. Slot 22 wavemaps sound the best and can be copied to other slots. I’ve put a slot 22 wavemap and a feedback-corrected version into adjacent slots on the preamp for each guitar, so I can try the ‘natural version’ first, then switch to the corrected version if I get problems.
What does it sound like? Amazing! I wouldn’t have believed such a sound possible from any pickup/preamp, and believe me, in my summer job as a festival sound engineer, I’ve listened to everything on the market and tried to get a good sound. Today I put the signal through my studio monitors for the first time, having set everything up on headphones, and I was blown away. Clearly, it has absorbed the acoustic characteristics of instrument and microphone and combined them in a very musical way. The wavemaps it has made for two of my guitars are clearly different and emphasise what is good about each one. If I use the wavemap of one guitar for the other one, it does not respond as well, and therefore the wavemaps are clearly tailored to the individual guitar/mic/pickup combination.
And therein, perhaps, lies the reason why the Fishman Aura system never caught on in a big way. My limited Aura experience showed me that for a given guitar, very few of the Aura presets/samples gave me a pleasing sound. Perhaps because they were not based on the actual instruments to which they were subsequently applied. Seems like the ToneDexter really does take into account the individual instrument/pickup/mic combination used.
I have yet to try using this with my own gigging guitars through a big PA system, so my caveat would be the possibility of feedback. I did quickly run my fairly grotty camping session guitar with fairly grotty pickup through my festival PA last weekend. I got it to feed back by running it loud right in front of the FOH speakers, but the notch filter quickly sorted it out. One performer, Charlotte Carrivick, turned up with a ToneDexter and her own wavemap, which needed only minimal eq’ing on the PA and sounded warm and realistic. I could push the volume for her amazing solo flatpicking without fear of feedback.
My own preferred twin channel sound uses the pickup signal for warmth and body, and the mic signal for high-end sparkle. I easily achieved that mix on the ToneDexter by using a small diaphragm SE condenser on a hypercardioid setting, positioned up the neck. By using different mics and different positioning, there’s no reason you couldn’t achieve whatever sound you’re after using this preamp. You only need the mic to quickly play in the signal, so it shouldn’t be too hard to beg or borrow various mics to experiment with, even if you don’t own such mics already. Multiple guitars, wavemaps and pickup types can be therefore used on stage with quick, muted changeovers with just one box in front of you.
I’ll be keeping my twin-channel setup for a while until I’ve tried this out on real big gigs (bearing my sparse diary in mind, I might have to wait until next festival season for that, lol). I’m pretty sure that the ToneDexter is a quantum leap towards the holy grail of an accurate, fully adjustable, quality acoustic guitar pickup sound. It can also save money compared with having to equip each instrument with an expensive onboard microphone.
Here’s a link to more info. Strangely, the first video demo from Doug Young starts from a first-class pickup sound, so the ToneDexter effect is relatively subtle. The other videos further down the page let you hear more clearly exactly what is going on. audiosprockets.com/tonedexter/
Go for it folks!