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Post subject: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 1:23 pm
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Help Ijust bought a new Mustang II and I don't know how to get a clean channel for my acoustic guitar. Can anyone help me Please? :(
Ken


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 4:34 pm
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There are now quite a few threads both here and on the FUSE software forum talking about how to get a decent, clean acoustic tone from the Mustangs.

Most advice revolves around using the Twin Reverb amp model as a starting point, with very low gain setting, and then tweaking eq settings, maybe with some gentle reverb.

There are some ok user prests in the FUSE library for acoustics, but none are spot on to my ears. It may just be that the Mustang amp design really doesn't lend itself to a great acosutic sound - its simply not what they are designed for; the best acoustic amps are designed from the ground up.

An acoustic amp model may be a future addition to the Mustangs firmware, but it will still be fighting against the basic design of the amps.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 1:04 am
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If Fender does decide to include an acoustic amp model, I hope they don't try to do another acoustic simulator like Digitech or Boss has done. The only company that has had any success with this type of thing, at least to me, has been Fishman with their Aura pedal series. I have the Aura Spectrum pedal and it is freakishly good. So if Fender does go that route, they'll have a pretty high bar to overcome for me.

As for using the Twin as a starting point, it is important to remember to turn off the cab sim.

O.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:15 am
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The Aura pedal is a specialist pre-amp designed to be used with acoustic guitars, (and might, or might not, work well with a Mustang). The Boss and Digitech pedals are seeking to achieve an 'acoustic' sound by modifying the tone of an electric guitar.

Not really the same thing at all, and probably nor fair to compare the two.

If Fender do try to improve the provision for acoustic guitars on the Mustangs, I am assuming (hoping) that they will do so by adding a 'proper' acoustic amp model to the existing list of available amps implemented through the firmware, rather than just by adding an acoustic simulator to the available effects.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:25 am
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depepat wrote:
The Aura pedal is a specialist pre-amp designed to be used with acoustic guitars, (and might, or might not, work well with a Mustang). The Boss and Digitech pedals are seeking to achieve an 'acoustic' sound by modifying the tone of an electric guitar.

Not really the same thing at all, and probably nor fair to compare the two.

If Fender do try to improve the provision for acoustic guitars on the Mustangs, I am assuming (hoping) that they will do so by adding a 'proper' acoustic amp model to the existing list of available amps implemented through the firmware, rather than just by adding an acoustic simulator to the available effects.


I wasn't suggesting that the Aura be used with the Mustang by any means, nor was I comparing the two. However, I've used the Aura on a piezo equipped electric guitar (mine) through a P.A system and an acoustic amp with great success. While it doesn't fully sound like an acoustic, the Aura certainly adds more woodiness and softens the piezos decidedly quacky and pingy output.

I am a bit concerned that the Mustang's speaker does not have enough high frequency extension to fully reproduce the sound of an acoustic guitar. I think I might do a little experiment and plug in the Aura's output into the Mustang's Aux input. That should give me a pretty good confirmation of the speakers ability or inability to handle an acoustic guitar. Come to think of it, simply plugging in a CD player to the AUX input and playing a recording you're fairly familiar with should show the speaker's ability to reproduce full range content. Hmmm...

O.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:02 pm
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I agree that the likely limitations of the speakers in the Mustangs are one of the issues in getting a decent acoustic guitar sound - for example, many specialist acoustic amps have a separate speaker (or speakers) for the higher frequencies, typically have more sophisticated/versatile control over eq, and often have some sort of feedback buster.

I think the best we can hope for, if an acoustic amp model is added to the Mustangs, is a somewhat better starting point for acoustics than is currently offered by the existing range of amp models.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 10:11 am
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depepat wrote:
I agree that the likely limitations of the speakers in the Mustangs are one of the issues in getting a decent acoustic guitar sound - for example, many specialist acoustic amps have a separate speaker (or speakers) for the higher frequencies, typically have more sophisticated/versatile control over eq, and often have some sort of feedback buster.

I think the best we can hope for, if an acoustic amp model is added to the Mustangs, is a somewhat better starting point for acoustics than is currently offered by the existing range of amp models.


Indeed. But as I was listening to the sound of my acoustic/electric/preamp combo I realized that some of the prominence of lower mids in the speaker could actually help round out the sound of the piezos. It's too much right now but I thinking that maybe just a pre-EQ'd amp model to flatten out the frequency response would help get us most of the way there.

O.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 10:47 am
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My opinion (for what it's worth) is that a multi-band (frequency) parametric EQ effect would be much more versatile. It would help greatly in achieving good tone from an acoustic guitar on clean sounding amps such as the Twin Reverb model and being switchable between pre or post amp, would cover a lot of ground in dialing in just about any other tone on any amp model.

Acoustic amp models or a dedicated acoustic sim seem to me to be waste of resources when all they are really doing is working on the frequency range. Heck they could even have a preset for the EQ named "Acoustic" that you could use as a starting point. Using the same effect you could also choose a preset named "Scooped Mids" for electrics etc....

Just my 2 coppers.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 11:53 am
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I find getting a clean sound for my acoustic easy.Then again,Mine is one of a kind.

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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2011 8:12 pm
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The 'clean-ness' of the sound isn't really the issue, its about trying to add to that sound all of the subtleties of strings vibrating over a wooden acoustic chamber and being modified by the tonewoods used in the guitar's body that forms that chamber.

Hard to see all that being achieved with any of the Mustang amps as the starting point, but lets not deter Fender from trying !


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 10:18 am
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depepat wrote:
The 'clean-ness' of the sound isn't really the issue, its about trying to add to that sound all of the subtleties of strings vibrating over a wooden acoustic chamber and being modified by the tonewoods used in the guitar's body that forms that chamber.

Hard to see all that being achieved with any of the Mustang amps as the starting point, but lets not deter Fender from trying !

I'm not sure if your talking about an acoustic amp model or an acoustic simulator. I assume your talking about an acoustic simulator as an amp designed for acoustic guitars is really just a 'clean' amp with a tone stack especially designed for that purpose - just like a bass amp is just a guitar amp with a tone stack designed for that purpose. They don't 'add' anything they mearly optimise the tone stack for the intended use and possibly include effects commonly used with that instrument.

So, if your talking about an acoustic simulator, let's give away the magic trick in a very simplified block diagram:

Image

An 'exciter', as you can read in this Wikipedia artical is just a specialized phase shift/distortion device that works on specific frequencies. The excited frequencies we're interested in for this application are high frequencies. Audio equalization is explained in this artical.

Using the Boss AC 3 as an example and forgetting about reverb feature, you'll see that they provide an input level control pot, a 'body' control pot, a 'top' control pot and a selector switch (standard, jumbo, enhance and piezo).

The 'body' and 'top' are volume controls to set the depth of those filters.

The selector switch is where the AC 3 gets fancy and provides preset 'blends' of the 4 inputs to the blender mixer (dry, body, top and exciter).

Now granted, with an acoustic simulator pedal, this is all transparent to the user. You don't have to know anything - just twidle the knobs.

But, if you know what's going on, you can actually roll your own acoustic simulator by using a graphic or multi-band parametric EQ followed by an exciter such as Aphex Aural Exciter or BBE Sonic Maximiser.

Or:

graphic/muli-band parametric EQ > high frequency distortion > phase shift

You can even do this in a DAW using VST's - you just have to think about things such as frequency, distortion and phase.

Getting back to the Mustang amps, if you have an EQ effect, you can follow it with the 'overdrive' stomp with the low and mid controls all the way down and the high all the way up, followed by the 'phase shifter'. But, you have to remember that the distortion and phase shift need to be used with the judgement that these are ever so slight additions to the sound and very easy to over do (therefore the presets on the AC 3). In other words all the blending is in your hands.

To do it right, you really need the EQ effect in front, but since the Mustang doesn't have one as yet, you can try it without it to see what you can get. It would probably be best to put the effects 'post amp' and use the amp's tone stack for EQ.

A problem you may run into is that the 'clean' sounding amp models (the black face models) have tone stacks with controls that are interactive with each other. In other words, changing the one tone control effects the other tone controls - just like on the real amps. So, dialing in 'top' and 'body' may be difficult to get how you want them to be ideally without an EQ effect.

---

If on the other hand, if you were talking about amplifying an acoustic guitar, an EQ effect would still provide the best way to bring out the frequencies you want (using a clean amp model) to make it sound the way you want IMO.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 10:55 am
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p90sdude wrote:
I'm not sure if your talking about an acoustic amp model or an acoustic simulator. I assume your talking about an acoustic simulator as an amp designed for acoustic guitars is really just a 'clean' amp with a tone stack especially designed for that purpose - just like a bass amp is just a guitar amp with a tone stack designed for that purpose. They don't 'add' anything they mearly optimise the tone stack for the intended use and possibly include effects commonly used with that instrument.

So, if your talking about an acoustic simulator, let's give away the magic trick in a very simplified block diagram:

Image

An 'exciter', as you can read in this Wikipedia artical is just a specialized phase shift/distortion device that works on specific frequencies. The excited frequencies we're interested in for this application are high frequencies. Audio equalization is explained in this artical.

Using the Boss AC 3 as an example and forgetting about reverb feature, you'll see that they provide an input level control pot, a 'body' control pot, a 'top' control pot and a selector switch (standard, jumbo, enhance and piezo).

The 'body' and 'top' are volume controls to set the depth of those filters.

The selector switch is where the AC 3 gets fancy and provides preset 'blends' of the 4 inputs to the blender mixer (dry, body, top and exciter).

Now granted, with an acoustic simulator pedal, this is all transparent to the user. You don't have to know anything - just twidle the knobs.

But, if you know what's going on, you can actually roll your own acoustic simulator by using a graphic or multi-band parametric EQ followed by an exciter such as Aphex Aural Exciter or BBE Sonic Maximiser.

Or:

graphic/muli-band parametric EQ > high frequency distortion > phase shift

You can even do this in a DAW using VST's - you just have to think about things such as frequency, distortion and phase.

Getting back to the Mustang amps, if you have an EQ effect, you can follow it with the 'overdrive' stomp with the low and mid controls all the way down and the high all the way up, followed by the 'phase shifter'. But, you have to remember that the distortion and phase shift need to be used with the judgement that these are ever so slight additions to the sound and very easy to over do (therefore the presets on the AC 3). In other words all the blending is in your hands.

To do it right, you really need the EQ effect in front, but since the Mustang doesn't have one as yet, you can try it without it to see what you can get. It would probably be best to put the effects 'post amp' and use the amp's tone stack for EQ.

A problem you may run into is that the 'clean' sounding amp models (the black face models) have tone stacks with controls that are interactive with each other. In other words, changing the one tone control effects the other tone controls - just like on the real amps. So, dialing in 'top' and 'body' may be difficult to get how you want them to be ideally without an EQ effect.

---

If on the other hand, if you were talking about amplifying an acoustic guitar, an EQ effect would still provide the best way to bring out the frequencies you want (using a clean amp model) to make it sound the way you want IMO.

We're going to have to start calling you "Professor p90sdude". :D :shock: :lol:


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 1:08 pm
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lesbeat wrote:
We're going to have to start calling you "Professor p90sdude". :D :shock: :lol:

Ha, Ha, Ha, not really. Just an old man who has gotten beat up enough times trying to solve my own digital recording issues on a budget that some of that stuff stuck. That's why I still use Win XP, I know how to set it up for audio recording - Vista and 7 with their file /security permissions and 64 bit - forget it. I am not ready to inflict that much pain on myself again learning all that...

And, a real professor might just poke some nitpicky holes in what I said, but in my layman's understanding, it's enough to work with for me.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 1:13 pm
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Well, I think people appreciate the detail that you give, I know I do.


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Post subject: Re: Help! clean channel on a Mustang II
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 4:27 pm
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I THINK what most people involved in these threads are talking about is getting an acceptable sound using their acoustic guitar with the Mustang amps, not acoustic simulation using an electric guitar (although there has been some discussion of that here as well).

The former would seem to require a new amp model built into the firmware, with acoustic specific speaker and cabinet emulations etc, whereas the latter is perhaps better thought of as an effect that can be achieved with a combination of eq and other things, perhaps as explained by p90sdude above, and applied to one or more of the existing amp models (and may therefore be achievable withe the existing FUSE software).

The net effect might, however, end up being very similar sound-wise !


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