Pickup in my Rigel A+

[Drew L]

I've been playing my Rigel A+ for about a year now, much of it plugged in with my band. #I'm somewhat luke warm on the sound I'm getting amplified (sounds pretty thin and loses almost all of the tone I love acoustically), although I'll admit that I haven't done much in the way of experimenting to tweak the sound so that's probably mostly my fault.

It got me thinking though-- what's the factory installed pickup that it comes with? #Is it a readily available unit or is it some Rigel home grown thing?

[mandofiddle]

Not sure what it is, but are you using a pre-amp? If not, that'd help the tone a lot...

[Drew L]

Yep-- I have a preamp. I have a little L.R. Baggs Gigpro preamp. Again, I haven't messed with it too much to try to tune it. On top of that, I run through a BOSS EQ pedal to bump up my volume for solos and such. It should be enough to tune the sound if I sat down with it and actually knew what I was doing. I'm pretty ignorant on this stuff.

[Fred G]

I e-mailed Peter Mix a while ago and asked him and if I remember correctly he said they buy someone else's piezo pickup and rewire it to their specs.

I used an LR Baggs paracoustic DI pre-amp with mine and it really improved the sound.

[John Flynn]

Drew:

I have an A+ also. The Rigel pickup is one of the best pizeos out there, but it is still a pizeo. A microphone is always going to give you a better acoustic sound and a mag pickup is going to give you a better electric sound. What pizeos have going for them are they are hassle free and relatively cheap. But they are what they are. A preamp like the Baggs DI or the Boss AD-5 will help, but there is no substitute for a good mike.

[doanepoole]

When I had a Rigel what I'd do is run the piezo through a pre-amp and turn the volume to a comfortable level for ryhtm playing, but I'd still use the mic for lead stuff, which I found very effective, and I didn't lose out on the raw acoustics of the instrument.

Just an idea.

[Drew L]

I was thinking about giving the mic thing a shot for solos. Would an SM57 work for that? I've got one of those sitting around and I think the PA has an extra channel...

[Ken Sager]

For use on a loud stage the SM57 is hard to beat as an instrument mic.

My humble opinion...

Best,
Ken

[Ellie]

I like using my AKG c 1000 with the hypercardiod capsule cover on it. It gives me great volume, and I've had no feedback problems with it, even though our band plays fairly loud, and has a drummer.
I used a piezo and preamp for years on my old mando, and it would be hard to go back now, tone wise. I'd rather just play an electric mando than do that brittle piezo tone dance again.

[jammin]

I've been playing with some friends for several months and using their mixer and amp for my A+ deluxe. I have been disappointed by the tone because it sounds twangy, like the strings are getting damped by frets, especially for the higher strings. However, today I played with another friend who had a Crate amp and I was blown away by the sound. It was pure, without twang, and similar in depth to the natural tone. I think some guitar amps are not well-suited to the piezo pickups and mandolin sound range. The twang I heard probably was feedback, which couldn't be eliminated even at low volume settings. Have you tried an acoustic amp, which is designed to produce purer tones?

[Doc]

I have an A+ Dlx on the way...and was wondering about the piezo myself. I've used piezo's for years on guitar and fiddle. I can't say I really like the sound on guitar, but it does get the job done and most non-musicians can't tell it's not as faithful as a good mic. Piezo's on fiddle are not my first choice anymore, but they can reproduce the sound fairly well if you have an amp with at least a parametric midrange control. I think when I gig live with the mando now I'll go for the piezo for rhythm and step up to the mic for rides and fills. Sounds to me like the best of both worlds.

Doc http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif