Hi all,

Just wanted to know if anyone has used one of the above with an electro acoustic guitar, I'm assuming they're really aimed at electric guitar and bass ?

Any reason why they wouldn't be suitable for an acoustic ?

Cheers

Nick

They will tune anything with a pickup - so electric, electro-acoustic, bass (as above), electric violin, mandolin, cello...

Hewesy

Thanks for the clarification Hewesy, much appreciated.

So I order a TU-3 yeasterday and it arrives today and I've just spent a hour or so trying it out and I'm a bit concerned - it's affecting what I'm hearing through my monitors, specfically it's like someone has turned up a presence control.

I put a Seymour Duncan Woody XL in a 31 year old Aria Dreadnought yesterday and spent a long time tinkering with the EQ on my mixer, finally arriving at what I thought was a very acceptable tone. With that pick up plugged into the TU-3 and then the TU-3 plugged into the same mixer channel with the EQ untouched from yesterday it sounds horrible - by far and away the worse culprit is the top E string which now has this awful ring to it, as I say, like someone has really tweaked a presence control.

I've checked two other electro acoustics, each with different (permanent) pickup systems in them and although the effect is more subtle, they do sound brighter.

So I'm a little annoyed / concerned - anyone else experienced something similiar with this
pedal ?

Cheers,

Nick

Is it possible you are plugging into a line input without a DI box. If so the tuner will now be like a buffer giving you a "true" tone, wheras before you had an impedance mismatch, which you had eq'ed until you liked it?

If it's electro acoustic and has a battery then that shouldn't be an issue?

--------------------
I've never liked a solo violin, you need at least five for a proper fire.

Yes fletcher, yesterday I was plugging the lead from the SD Woody pickup directly into a line in on one of the mixer's channels - are you saying this is bad practise ? The blurb with the pickup says that no pre amp is needed, it doesn't mention DI boxes either.

The other two guitars both have preamps one is onboard, the other external and as I mentioned, I can hear a subtle difference with them too. Normally with these I just go from pre amp into line in - is this also wrong ?

Just to clarify, the guitar with the Woody pick up is not electro acoustic so has no pre amp and/or battery.

Nick

The subtle difference on the other guitars sound more typical - why purists build by-pass circuits etc, most of us just live with it - but maybe the other pick-up is having it's performance altered by the buffer in the tuner in line with it. Only a idea of course. There should not be such a drastic alteration in tone, so something isn't happy for sure.

Sorry, several questions.

If I was to get a DI box, do you have to spend crazy money or would something as basic as the Behringer D120 suffice ? I assume it's located as the last thing in the signal chain before you go into the mixer ?

What difference will it make to the sound - will I be back to the sound I had prior to getting the TU-3 or will it be more of the same in the sense of a truer (in my case bad) tone ?


Are you able to clarify what you mean by the 'buffer' in the pedal ? I've always thought of the TU-3 (and the TU-2 before it) as something of an industry standard and I wouldn't class it as particularly cheap, I'm surprised it doesn't have the bypass circuitry you talk of.

Many thanks for your time.

Nick

All Boss pedals have a little circuit in them which stops you losing signal when the effect is off. A true bypass is a seperate switch some people build for themselves. The ct in the Boss (and other brands) pedals also works as a buffer (a 1:1 gain amp stage I think) which stops impedance mismatch when pluging straight into a desk. Don't know if this is a deliberate design or just something that happens with these circuits. Hopefully someone who can explain better will chime in (hint....)

Tbh I am only offering suggestions, I may be wrong about your problem.

Since a passive magnetic guitar pickup like the SD Woody has a large inductive component to its output impedance, feeding the pickup directly to the line input of a mixer rolls off the treble frequencies very significantly. You have probably turned up the treble EQ on the mixer to compensate and get the sound you want. The Boss TU-2 has a high impedance input buffer (as other posters have mentioned), so running your signal through it will eliminate the treble cut you were getting with a direct feed. If you leave the mixer EQ unchanged, you will get an overly bright sound from the guitar, with way too much top end. There are several ways to solve this. (1) Change the mixer EQ back to a more nearly flat response, or (2) connect the guitar pickup direct to the mixer as before and feed the TU-2 from a mixer direct out, or (3) use a simple passive signal splitter on the guitar output, with one split to the mixer and the other to the TU-2, or (4) get a true bypass pedal to feed the TU-2.
A guitar DI box is not likely to help since most of them have a high input impedance, just like the TU-2.

--------------------
The Sound Physicist

Hi Jim,

Many thanks for the further clarification on this.

It's the change in tone that I'm struggling to understand I think - if it was just 'louder' with the pedal in the signal chain I could probably accept that but it's the actual affect on the tone that shocked me.

I have a 3 band EQ on my mixer with a sweepable mid but the hi EQ is set at 12k with +/-15db available and it doesn't seem to improve things with the pedal in the chain but maybe I just need to experiment more.

Nick

The sound of the pickup through the tuner pedal is actually the "normal" sound and is the same sound you would get running the pickup into a guitar amplifier or a DI box. If you set the mixer EQ flat (no boosts or cuts), you should get an acceptable and reasonably balanced sound with the pickup running through the tuner. Running the pickup direct to the (low impedance) mixer line input is what gives a major tone change since the pickup is not normally used that way. (The manufacturer may say that it is ok to go directly to mixer line input, and it is; however, doing so leads to a high-frequency cut.)
Cheers -- Jim

--------------------
The Sound Physicist

Many thanks Jim for the further clarification, much appreciated.

Nick