Preamps for Sunrise (Very Long!)
Steve Scott
Acoustic Guitar Tone. I've tried a lot of pickup/preamp combinations
over the last few years, some of which I've written about before. I have
gradually evolved my setup into something that is pretty tried and true
by others, I just had to beat my head against almost every available
choice before I could learn what worked/didn't work for me. Nothing
really revolutionary, but a field report from an ordinary musician who
buys the equipment, installs it, loads it and hauls it to the show, and
plays and sings on it.
We play mostly covers of music-we-like - Carter Family, Buddy Holly,
Norman Blake, Emmylou Harris, John Hiatt, Stevie Nicks, Richard Thompson,
Dido... anyway, it's not just quiet folk music, and I play it with a
flatpick, often pretty aggressively. Since my acoustic guitar is the
sole accompaniment I need a lot of variety of tone. I started playing
live on acoustic amps, then moved to a good PA. I've been through a few
guitars over the last 24 years, right now I'm happy with a nice Gibson
SJ-200.
UST piezos didn't work for me, too much zing for my flatpicking, even the
newer improved models (insert huge list of tested pickup/preamp
combinations here :-). I do like the immediate response. And I like
hearing some artists use it (Doc, Pat Flynn, Tommy Emmanuel, etc) who
have such great technique they can make anything sound good.
Likewise, internal/external mics wouldn't cut it, too much feedback, not
enough power.
I've used several SBT's, decided the Trance Audio Acoustic Lens was the
best for my needs. I've posted on that one, it is a packaged system with
its own preamp. If I just wanted clean acoustic sound, or was just
playing solo instrumentals, there's no doubt this pickup would do
everything I need all by itself, it is _by far_ the most acoustic
sounding live system I've heard. While a few other SBTs were very nice,
they just didn't always stand up to highly amplified flatpicking, they
started to break up, get compressed/nasal, get shrill, feed back, etc.
However, the Lens, good as it is, is just almost _too_ acoustic, not
enough rock'n'roll for all our styles <g>. To get the "rest of the band"
I had to have a magnetic pickup. I tried several - Seymour Duncan Woody,
Lace Dobro pickup, Sunrise, Fishman Rare earth blend, Duncan Acoustic
tube, and Duncan MagMic. I kept coming back to the Sunrise as my
preferred sound. I paid attention over the years watching and listening
to some of my favorite concert guitarists (Kottke, Richard Thompson,
Browne, Crary, Hedges, Emmylou, Young, Wilcox, Colvin, Beck, etc.) - I
was always drawn to their combination of power and clarity, and all of
them got it from Acoustic Lens/FRAP and/or Sunrise, supplementing their
enormous talent, of course.
I attempted the approach of using the Sunrise on bass only (remove/bury
the treble magnets or EQ to death), Lens on treble only. I didn't like
this, it always seemed to sound extreme and unnatural, and was difficult
to blend as accompaniment to our vocal duets.
I tried using the Lens as the dominant sound and selectively adding
Sunrise - again, although this sound can work for some styles, it just
wouldn't cover enough territory for me. When we ramp up in a song and I
get to wailing on the guitar I want a really strong fundamental tone to
dominate, so...
So I decided to try to make the Sunrise work as my main pickup, and add
Acoustic lens for the nice airy/acoustic tone. Again, nothing I
invented, just following along what has obviously worked for lots of pros
over the years. However, those pros had something I didn't have -- a
topnotch preamp for the Sunrise.
I started thinking about electric guitarists' searches for their Grails -
get the right instrument, with the right pickup, and it still doesn't
work unless they have that magic preamp - either built in with the
amp/speaker cabinet, a separate head, a DI, or even a modeler. Those
guys can be fanatics about the details they look for in just the
preamplifier.
I had tried enough combinations to prove to myself that the whole system
is what counts - very few, if any, pickups will perform their absolute
best all by themselves into any old PA. So I set about looking for the
right preamp for the Sunrise, for my PA system and my ears. Over a
couple of years I went through 20+ preamps listening and "feeling" for
the one that would suit me. They ranged from a $50 Fishman Powerjack to
a $1,495 Pendulum SPS-1.
All these preamps will of course match up differently, some very well,
with other pickups/PA/amps. In general, *for the Sunrise pickup only, on
my PA system* I felt like the preamps kind of grouped into these four
categories (prices are new, street, sort of - Warning Adjective Alert
ahead, trying to describe sound with words):
-----------------------------------------------
4.) Not very good... :
- Summit TD-100 ($390) - Tube based DI. _Very_ electric sounding. Not
enough gain. Noise, hum.
- Summit SBA-221 ($525) - DI/mic pre. Solid state input, solid state or
tube output. Sound was very electric in either output mode. Very low
input gain, forced to use a lot of tube output stage to get enough
volume. Nice impersonation of an ES-335, not much help for an SJ-200 :-)
Way too noisy (hum) as well.
- Aphex Acoustic Exciter ($140) - Enhancer mode on. Low gain, noisy at
higher levels. Can get decent tone at lower volumes, but pretty fussy
about high/low enhancement settings. Kind of a sharp, thin sound on
treble. Strong bass, but can feed back easily.
- Fishman Powerjack ($50) - Not very nice, boomy and thin at the same
time. Honk.
- K&K Pure blender ($85) - Bad midrange honk, fuzzy lows, muffled highs.
Integral EQ didn't help.
- B-Band A2 ($90) - Overloads, distorts without pad. With pad on had low
output, tone was sharp and boomy.
- Joemeek VC3Q ($220, discontinued) - Mic preamp with DI, compressor, 3-
band fixed EQ. Can get a strong sound, I've heard it sound fantastic on
bass guitar. Takes a lot of fussing, very sensitive - the compressor can
really ruin the dynamics of acoustic guitar. EQ not too helpful for
Sunrise.
- Presonus AcoustiQ ($250) - Not a good tone, too edgy and nasal. "Tube"
assistance sounds distorted at higher volume. Notch was difficult to
apply. Tone controls too coarse. Had some noise problems. Tons of
gain!
-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
3.) Average to Good. Usable if necessary, flexible enough to work
blended with the Lens (or other good SBT), not always good enough for
Sunrise on its own:
- BBE 386 ($250, discontinued) - Must use its sonic maximizer to get any
decent tone, then it's easy to overdo it, causing strong bass overload
(distortion) in the speakers. Sharp, sparkly sound gets tiring quickly.
Very processed sounding through a good PA, might be useful through a
weaker system.
- Boss GE-7 ($90) - Doesn't develop the full warm Sunrise bass
capabilities. In EQ mode, there's no 1 kHz slider where the Sunrise
needs it most on my system. Very sensitive, a little EQ or gain goes a
long way. Handy to have around for low-hassle, non-critical setups.
- ART Tube Parametric EQ ($160) - This has a 1 Mb input impedance,
input/output gain, 4-band semiparametric. Low volume. Fairly nice tone,
decent EQ.
- Fishman Platinum Pro ($165) - Tends to a midrange honk, takes precision
control to tame it, never gets it quite right. Notch filter also _very_
touchy, but works. Good features for the price/size.
- LR Baggs PADI ($130) - I never could get the tone right, this one was
_too_ laid back compared to the Platinum's oversensitivity. Not terrible
sound, just not very dynamic, kinda dull.
- FMR RNP ($475) - Mic preamp with DI input. Fairly harsh as DI with the
Sunrise, tone seemed to jump around with different playing styles.
- Fishman Dual Parametric ($200, discontinued) - Nice as a DI, portable,
excellent 2-band parametric EQ. But, I occasionally had some feedback
problems using this one, had to use low control for that, and the high
was needed for a 1-1.6 kHz cut, so none left for the other tone contours.
- Millennia Media TD-1 ($1,255) - Fairly exotic mic preamp/DI. Tube or
solid state, 2-band parametric EQ. Very powerful sound, can get a little
overdynamic. Too electric-sounding, in tube or solid state mode.
Couldn't quite get the EQ to tame the midrange, sounded a little boxy.
Excellent mic preamp, though.
-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
2.) Very good. Acceptable clean tone, low noise, powerful gain. Not
unreasonable as single source, could still occasionally use a little help
though:
- Pendulum SPS-1 (magnetic preamp module) ($1,495) - Strong sound,
dynamic, but not entirely the smooth sound I wanted for this pickup.
Excellent EQ, but didn't shape the Sunrise quite like I needed. However,
we tested the SPS-1 as a vocal mic preamp and there was no going back -
by far the best live mic preamp I've found, extremely accurate and
_real_. We ended up buying a used one just for this.
- Rane AP13 ($430) - Very nice, can use high or low impedance inputs.
Graphic EQ fairly useful, lots of input/output options. Tone can be
controlled pretty well, develops some of the Sunrise's acoustic
capabilities.
- Ashly BP-41 ($400, discontinued) - Actually designed as a bass preamp,
very useful features for acoustic too, though. Upgraded version of the
SC-40 that Doc, Merle, and Jack used for many years. Nice blend of
strong/smooth sound, pretty sensitive, could produce a little feedback
that the semiparametric filter fixed. Doesn't do warm good enough
though.
- Sunrise S-B2 ($175) - Matches nicely with the pickup. Not a ton of
gain, but usually sufficient. Immediate response, warm, smooth tone,
mellows out the midrange hump. Battery powered only, very portable.
- Trance Audio Amulet ($495) - A strong dynamic sound, fast response. A
little punchy in the bass, but very clean. Lots of volume. Good tone.
- Presonus MP20 ($420) - Surprising to me, this mic preamp/DI produced a
strong, powerful sound with the Sunrise, mainly by using the IDSS
(harmonic distortion) control. Enhanced midrange sounds punchy, but can
be difficult to sing over, can overwhelm vocals. This preamp also works
nicely for reducing piezo quack.
- Grace Design 101 ($550) - Mic preamp with DI. Similar to the Amulet,
very clean, clear tone. Great gain, perfectly quiet, classy.
-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
1.) Excellent. By far the smoothest, most acoustic/least electric tone.
Easily works with Sunrise pickup as single source:
- Sunrise STI ($1,230) - This is it. The Sunrise tube preamp had no
equals in developing the full capabilites of the Sunrise magnetic pickup.
How many superlatives can I use here -- Warm, smooth, dynamic,
percussive, full, round, responsive, forgiving, buttery, silky, pleasant,
tactile. It has an immediate response, does not overload or distort.
Microphonic tone coupled with stunning low end, it just sounds and
_feels_ better than everything else I tried.
Hmmm. Sounds like a Bulwer-Lytton entry: "He lay still in the soft
magnetic field, feeling the sunrise on his face and ears - warm, smooth,
dynamic, percussive, full, round, responsive, forgiving, buttery, silky,
pleasant, tactile - how nice to just relax and be carried away by the
thoughts and sounds of pleasanter times, when his touch brought an
immediate response, without the pain of distorted memories, of her
stunning low end that just felt better than everything else he had ever
tried, and the sound, the sound just kept growing, a soft chiming,
ringing, tingling, persisting, deMANDing, anNOYING, SQUEALING why won't
you leave me alone I don't want to get up and go to work, damned alarm
clock."
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah... Is it pure acoustic? Nope, but live
sound is what I want it for, and this tube preamp/magnetic pickup
combination excels at that. Then adding the Acoustic Lens just gives me
so much flexibility and control, I can play soft or loud, under or over
or around the vocals, driving bass rhythms and clean acoustic all at the
same time.
Downsides?
- It's expensive, no doubt. But I was willing to spend even more on
something like the Pendulum or TD-1 if that would get the sound I wanted,
and stop me from chasing this damn thing the rest of my life... Buying
my freedom, as it were. The same old story - even by
trading/renting/reselling/try-it-out-on-approval/etc., it still cost more
trying to get by cheaper and having to work my way up the preamp food
chain than it would have to have just bought the STI right up front.
- It requires a separate equalizer, for the tone I want. Sunrise has a
strong midrange and it's too hard to sing over without some EQ. I cut a
little at 400 Hz, 1 kHz, and 4 kHz, then for some "optional extra
effects" I boost a little at 40 Hz and 10 kHz. I've used lots of
parametric and graphic equalizers, my favorite right now is the Ashly
MQX-2150 dual 15-band graphic, it's just really easy to get the Sunrise
right with that.
- The STI comes with a very nice flight case, but the preamp itself is
fairly bulky, not as convenient as a little DI, or even a rack-mount
unit. However, since I'm using a rack case anyway for my powered mixer,
vocal pre, and the graphic EQ, putting the STI in the back of that box is
no big deal.
Jim Kaufman is a great guy, very helpful. He only sells the tube preamp
direct, he offers a 5-day evaluation period. I only needed about 5
minutes <g>. BTW, there was one on eBay the other day, pretty rare to
see them there I think.
I know there are a lot more DI/preamps out there, but I feel this was a
good enough representation of different types and price ranges to satisfy
me. Mostly it proves that, as with most things, you get what you pay for
:-\ I'm sure some new kid will show up on the block one of these days
and I'll have to play with him (PUTW NT, Baggs M1, ...?) but I'm pretty
satisfied for now, and at least I'm not constantly switching things
around, can spend more time actually playing music!
Finally, - this kind of money may seem extreme just for a black box,
without even a power switch on it! I ain't rich, but I can afford to
have some hobbies and some fun, here's sort of how I look at it -- I have
a lot of friends with expensive interests - Harley-Davidsons, country
club golf memberships, bass boats, houseboats, rebuilding classic cars,
gun collecting, raising kids :-) - these folks spend much more $ on their
choices than I do on mine, so I'm actually coming out ahead!
>>Rationalization mode off<< My wife, however, says I "met Musician's
Friend at the Crossroads" hehe
Thanks for your RMMGA posts, I learn a lot reading this group. Have fun
with your music, hope this helps if you're interested in this kind of
setup.
Steve
Steve
to others from time to time, if it's OK with you.
It's rare to find someone who's actually owned or gigged with THAT many
preamps. Really nice resource.
Thanks.
SEFSTRAT
solo webpage: http://members.aol.com/sefstrat/index.html/sefpage.html
band webpage: www.timebanditsrock.com
paul asbell
I don't use a Sunrise myself... but your verification of that
combination w/ the Sunrise TubePre will undoubtedly save some folks a
lot of time... AND money!
Paul
Paul Asbell
pas...@paulasbell.com
www.paulasbell.com
Tony Done
get some serious gigs before I invest in a sunrise and tube preamp.
Tony D
"Steve Scott" <squee...@netspace1.com> wrote in message
news:freOb.867$kB1.37...@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
Julian Templeman
<lots of interesting stuff snipped>
>Over a couple of years I went through 20+ preamps listening and "feeling" for
>the one that would suit me. They ranged from a $50 Fishman Powerjack to
>a $1,495 Pendulum SPS-1.
Yeow! I can just imagine what my wife would say if I tried this
experiment :-) So I'll save this posting for future reference, to save
myself some possible grief...
But it's a pity that you didn't get to try the Raven Labs preamps. It
would have been interesting to see where they fitted into the list.
ttfn,
julian
in london
Templeman Consulting Ltd.
London and North Wales
foldedpath
You're still adding a little of the Trance Audio Lens for "air" on top of
the Sunrise, right? How are you blending the Sunrise and Lens? Are you
running the two channels into your powered mixer?
Also... how well does the Sunrise tube preamp work as a general-purpose
DI/preamp for other guitars? Is it tuned in some way for the Sunrise that
makes it unworkable with other instruments, or can it work as a tube DI for
"warming" something like a SBT pickup before running into another
preamp/EQ?
--
Mike Barrs
Steve Scott
words. It was actually pretty fun to compare these different products
and learn what subtleties of tones and feels there are, and what I like,
except when I would get frustrated because I just wanted it to sound good
right Now! Steve, you're more than welcome to send those reviews around
if they might help someone else. Unfortunately there were so many that I
wanted to write up that it was hard to get much detail in there, I just
tried to capture an overall impression. And of course it's just my
opinions and experience and I expect others have different results, too,
so I hope I don't sound like a know-it-all. I feel like this kind of
stuff is practically group knowledge, so many of you folks have written
something that helps me learn.
But still, I'm not sure if any musician ever just completely takes
someone else's word for what works, Paul, seems like lots of us (me)
still need to try it ourselves to find out :) I didn't always exhaust
every possibility trying to dial a piece in - after getting some
experience in this kind of "exhaustion" I soon learned to tell pretty
quick whether a product had a chance of working for me or not.
And yes, Tony I'm going to have to play-fer-pay a few times myself too.
But I get so much pleasure from playing music when it feels right and
sounds good, that it's worth a little of my own expense; We go to movies
at $25 a shot, to concerts and theaters for $100's, etc., so paying for
music equipment is kinda like buying entertainment too <g>
Julian, I've got a good deal going with my wife Lynnie - she happens to
be my duet partner, and a wonderful singer. She actually encourages me
to buy a piece of equipment when it gives her the same good feeling it
gives me, that's how I got my current guitar, speakers, mics, mixer, mic
preamps, and the Sunrise products - she has said many times that she's a
"Sunrise girl", she's always gone for that smooth magnet sound too! But
sometimes I feel guilty and tell her it's not fair for me to spend too
much of the "fun" budget on music equipment, that we should buy her
something personal - she just says "I'll take the cash" :-) So I still
gotta pay a little extra to feed my habits... Anyway, I buy and sell a
lot of this stuff used, on eBay or with other musicians, or just rent or
try on 30-day approval, so it rarely costs full price, I could never
afford to do that.
While putting that review together I thought of the Raven too, Julian, it
was conspicuously missing since it seems to be so popular. It would
indeed have been interesting and useful to compare the PMB, I would think
it would be very good from what I've heard. Others that I would like to
try are the TC Electronic 1140, I expect it would do well with the
Sunrise, I've read that Michael Hedges used these; also the D-Tar and
Highlander products looked nice. However, from listening to such a wide
variety as I did, I think that the general types of preamps sort of fall
into their own tone categories, and I found I could start to pretty much
know what to expect with the Sunrise pickup after a while. For example:
- Small battery powered, solid state DI's are fairly similar - a little
noisy, not too dynamic, generally can have some type of frequency
response anomaly.
- Higher quality solid state dedicated guitar preamps, typically
rackmount units, have a clean sound biased for acoustic guitar response,
mainly piezos and/or mics; they usually have flexible I/O, they often
make a magnetic pickup sound somewhat "punchier" than I'd like, and
sometimes make the midrange a little too pronounced.
- Of the ones I tried, vacuum tube preamps and DI's that are designed for
electric guitar and/or electric bass were mostly not too good with the
Sunrise, for my tonal preferences. They tend to produce a strong
electric guitar sound, with a big compressed midrange tube _crunch_ and
metallic trebles. The bass is kind of punchy and bright, not as smooth
and full as I would like. I know we've talked about trying the Demeter
or Groove Tubes, etc. before, Mike, I'd have to guess that if the Summits
and Millennia Media didn't suit me, the Demeter and GT probably wouldn't
either. It would still be fun to try them, maybe the Avalons too...
don't get me started again!
- I thought the DI's on the solid state mic preamps in general did pretty
well. This would be interesting to explore a little further, using a
wider selection of high-end microphone preamps, and maybe with a range of
quality DI boxes (JDI, BSS, Klark-Teknik, Countryman, etc.) just feeding
the mic input directly. This is roughly how the Pendulum works as I
understand it, the endpin module is basically an active DI powered by the
XLR phantom power, which converts the pickup signal to a low impedance
output and feeds into the microphone preamp. I've tested my Pendulum
endpin module with other mic preamps this way, it works fine - although
as I mentioned the Pendulum mic pre is phenomenal. Greg Gualtieri
actually sells the modules separately just for this purpose, to plug
directly into a mixer.
Whew, there's still a lot of combinations left ain't there?
Mike, I do run the Acoustic Lens into the mixer - since it is stereo it's
nice to use both signals into separate mixer inputs, but the Lens preamp
can sum them together and send a single line to the mixer if I want. So
far I like it both ways (I'm a Gemini...) Sunrise goes into its own
mixer channel, so yep, that's my blender. It doesn't take much of the
Lens to create a really nice acoustic shimmer on top of the mellow
Sunrise sound, it's really easy to control tone just with the mixer
volume sliders. And yes, I have two endpins in this guitar, running
separate cables. I have in the past plugged the Sunrise and both Lens
pickups into the Lens preamp inside the guitar, and just have a single
cable, it's a standard installation option for Trance Audio.
That's a great question about using the STI for other pickups, Mike, you
know I haven't even tried that. I've got guitars wired with K&K, Baggs
Element Active, and Fishman Matrix, I'll check those out soon as I can
and get back to you. I've also got a Stealth I might get back in one of
these days, hmmmm. My feeling is it will work great to smooth/warm up
those piezos. Jim Kaufman says the STI is designed to optimize the
Sunrise pickup response, but there's certainly no reason why it wouldn't
do fine with other pickups, it's a really nice, handwired vacuum tube
preamp with 2.2 Mb input impedance and 20 dB gain.
And speaking of other pickups - of course once I make up my mind and sink
a lot of time and money into this excellent system, David Enke and Lloyd
Baggs have really interesting new pickups coming (NT and M1) that promise
the type of tone I like, for less money :o Maybe a little too good to be
true, there's always a lot of marketing to wait out - I'm getting a kick
out of Baggs announcements of "the world's first body-sensitive soundhole
magnetic pickup" and "the breakthrough patent-pending... new technology
allows the pickup to respond to the guitar's string and body vibrations",
when for at least the last 15-20 years or so Jim Kaufman has been
publishing "all Sunrise Pickups have the unique design feature that
allows the pickup to couple and sense the body resonance and top of the
guitar it's mounted in, and still maintain a 116 dB feedback threshold"
And there was some kind of pickup thing that Bob Taylor was yipping about
a while back, can't quite remember what it was...
Here I go again, writing a damn book. I should be playing with that nice
new pickup system
Steve
Mondoslug1
Squeegybuggy wrote:
>It would
>indeed have been interesting and useful >to compare the PMB, I would think
>it would be very good from what I've >heard. Others that I would like to
>try are the TC Electronic 1140,
I've got an older mp3 of at tune("Resolution Boogie") with Sunrise & PMB-1
here:
http://www.soundclick.com/util/streamM3U.m3u?ID=359550&q=Hi
I think I cared for the AP-13 more than the PMB-1 with the Sunrise, but this is
easier.