RE: OT - acoustic pickups, etc

["greg williams" <gregorwilliams@comcast.net>]

Daryl,
I do lots of acoustic banging and I love my L.R. Baggs I-Beam. It installs
underneath, near the bridge, and you can experiment with placement. It
sounds very natural.
~Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Daryl Shawn [mailto:highhorse@mhorse.com] 
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 10:38 AM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: OT - acoustic pickups, etc

Forgive this wholly off-topic query, though of course it does concern 
equipment that will be eventually used in looping...

I like the onboard piezo pickup in my Takamine nylon-string, but I'm 
starting to do more banging on the guitar body these days and the piezo 
doesn't really transmit these sounds very well. An external mic does 
fine with this of course, but I want something suitable for onstage use 
and I hate having to hold more or less still in front of a mic. I've 
gotten a recommendation (thanks Michael!) on the Baggs Element, but am 
wondering if anyone's had experience with anything else, especially with 
having two different pickup systems in one guitar. I'd like to keep my 
current setup and add to it (maybe I can split the output at the endpin 
with a TRS jack...?).

Also, I'm making more use of the harmonics that appear between the fret 
and the headstock, which of course aren't heard by standard-mounted 
pickups. I know Fred Frith had a guitar with a pickup mounted up on the 
headstock, though his was huge (and appeared on an electric) and was 
done quite some time ago, I'm hoping there are some kind of developments 
here since.

Finally, I'm looking for a really really good portable (i.e., stompbox, 
tabletop, half-rack) compressor that's well-suited to acoustic guitar, 
that is, helps to even out the natural sounds and doesn't produce any of 
the "breathing" effect - I'm not looking for extreme compression, just 
something to musically accentuate the harmonics and even out the big 
spike. The Keeley compressor is raved about frequently, but I'm curious 
if anyone has had experience with it on acoustic guitar.

Daryl Shawn
www.swanwelder.com
www.chinapaintingmusic.com