Engaging a drive pedal, any suspicion that the airy construction might deliver an unfocused lead tone is quickly dispelled – there’s sustain and grit aplenty from the USA-designed, Indonesian-made 58/15 ‘S’ pickups. We send the magnetic output to a Suhr Badger. We dilute our pick attack slightly to compensate for the comparatively light string gauge, but the acoustic-style textures here prove percussive and dynamically rich with a pleasing absence of telltale piezo ‘quack’. It’s always a little unnerving to hear acoustic guitar sounds emanating from an electric guitar, and with just the piezo volume engaged, this strangeness is accentuated by the three-dimensional realism of the tones on offer. We choose to test its capabilities by sending the piezo output to our Axe-FX III using a multiband compressor, a sprinkling of reverb, and a few other effects to help ‘stereoise’ the sound. It's just not the same.Most players drawn to a piezo-equipped guitar will be interested in its ability to provide a realistic-sounding acoustic guitar emulation. Everyone's ears are different, but believe me, I WANTED to hear a great acoustic. Newer designs may not do this, but that diagnosis came straight from Fishman when I get replacement saddles. I learned this the hard way polishing the guitar. One word of caution, these Fishman saddles will quit working if they get wet, and the design is such that they will suck moisture via Capillary action right down into the pickup. If you want some kind of wet/dry setup, the stereo thing might be useful. It's never enough to bother with a second amplification set up. I might play it straight acoustic for something like the intro to Can't You See, but that's all. I blend them in with the magnetic pickups for extra shimmer and increased nuance of tone. Having said that, this is my #1 and the piezos are the reason. Even a soft rock riff with choked strings or some body tapping noise is out of the question. If you want a driving D28 bluegrass rhythm, forget it. If you want to fingerpick or lightly strum a pretty acoustic intro or singer/songwriter piece, you can do that. You simply CANNNOT get the sound of hard strumming or acoustic rhythm effects from a piezo on a hardbody guitar. With the right strings and into the right amplification, fingerpicking and flatpicking are very realistic. The magnetic pickups work with no battery. It takes a 9 volt battery for the piezos. There is also a high-pass filter switch which is useful with the piezos. The smaller knobs on top are for the piezo volume and tone. You have an option of mono or stereo output so you can run the piezos to separate "acoustic" amplification (full range PA or acoustic amp - OR you can get close with an EQ pedal to your guitar amp). There is a toggle switch to move from regular pickups to both to piezo saddles only. It has piezo saddles from Fishman that came stock from Fender. In my profile pic is my Fender American Deluxe Power Telecaster. We did this guitar quite a few years ago, the last time I saw my son he saidd he never plays it and did I want it? I said no thank you. I liked the neck 'bucker all by itself the best and felt that the "acoustic" bridge was anything but. We ended up with a whole lot of options but frankly none of them very good. We brought the piezo signal out to its own pin on a stereo output jack - that way it could have its own signal chain, it goes to a DI for impedence matching and then to a separate input on the amp. The piezo signals are collected on a little PCB and goes to its own volume control. He also added a ToM style bridge with a piezo crystal in each saddle, there are six shielded wires coming from the bridge It ended up with two SD humbuckers with the little switching rings that lets you split the coils and either series or parallel them or each by itself (I know you aren't asking about that). He decided to put together one guitar to do it all and asked me to wire if for him. My son plays in a P&W band and used to haul several guitars to the gig to get the various sounds he thought he needed.
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