“Acoustic” and electric” guitars converge

I ran into Rick Turner at the Van Morrison show in SF 12/29/06. We were schmoozing before the show, and I mentioned that I was thinking how cool it would be to have a magnetic pickup on my Renaissance (“ampli-coustic”) guitar. In my solo work, I do a lot of looping, and playing that rich “acoustic” sound through overdrives and other stomp boxes doesn’t really get me where I want to go.

Renaissance RS-6

Rick informed me he was already on the case, trying to design a magnetic pickup what would do what we want it to do on a nominally acoustic instrument.

Yesterday I delivered my Renaissance RS-6 to Rick, who will install the electric pickup (with a separate output) – can’t wait!

While I was visiting his shop, I played a number of cool instruments, including a mandocello that sounded just awesome. And I picked up a Turner Model One, similar to the one I bought from Rick when he introduced them 25 years ago. The one I played yesterday has a piezo pickup under the saddle and a blend knob to combine that signal with the magnetic pickup.

Turner Model One

The electrics and the acoustics are beginning to converge, and that common ground is right where I live as a performer. When I play solo I build on “acoustic” guitar sounds and want to solo and improvise with “electric” sounds, and with the Honky Tonk Hippies I want to play mostly “electric” but it will be nice to have access to the “acoustic” flavors I can get with that piezo pickup played through a Mama Bear preamp.

D-TAR Mama Bear preamp

So next week when I go to get my RS-6, I’m going to drop off my Model One for a piezo upgrade. This is exciting!

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