Acoustic sound on my archtop. Is that possible?

VeedonFleece

Hi All,
Long time lurker, but just signed up today to leave a comment on this thread.

The guitar that Martin Taylor is playing in the clip is a Yamaha AEX1500. It has a floating minihumbucker and a piezo under the saddle. The switch on the top bout is to change from piezo, to mixed, to humbucker. There is also an electro-acoustic style mixer on the top side (not visible in the clip) and a slot for the battery to power the whole thing (visible in the clip). The guitar was marketed as the 'Martin Taylor model' by Yamaha back in the mid 1990s, which was when I bought mine. I still have it -- it is the only guitar I have had for anything like that length of time. It provides a very particular sound -- excellent for the type of fingerstyle jazz that Taylor is a master at. You can pick them up occasionally on eBay. I recently had to have the piezo re-wired on mine (as the original design meant that the wire attaching the undersaddle piezo to the mixer had a tendency to be guillotined as it went through the tiny hole under that saddle into the body of the instrument.

It is not a typical archtop, though -- the sound is too 'light'. So, if you want something that does the light, airy piezo mixed with a humbucker sound and a straight bop box, this would not be your guitar. Having said all this, I have a Godin 5th Ave and I do think that (at least unamplified) the Godin has the better tone for playing gypsy rhythm -- but I am having problems getting its singlecoil pickup to work in a nice way with my AER amplifier.

Hope some of this helps.

Chris

dennis

here daniele, this should answer your questions re godin:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203840968678968

Scoredog

If you like what you hear on that Martin Taylor clip, even though that is a specialized guitar you should be able to get close with your standard arch top and a clean amp using proper chord voicings and technique.

Daniele Belli

Thank you Denis for your video! The system of the Yamaha AEX1500 is exatly what Im looking for: a piezo with a preamp and eq....and then a selector between the two sounds.
Now I must find a good piezo and a good preamp
The Yamaha AEX1500 mount a generic "Yamaha piezo"
Any advice?

Jazzaferri

I am not sure from your post if you have the Yamaha setup right. Humbucker float mounted at the end of the fretboard and a piezo under the bridge saddle. Fishman make fairly good piezo's as do others. Lots of really nice custom humbuckers available for archtops.

If I misunderstood your post my apologies.

Bones

A good acoustic archtop is awesome for rhythm but hard to amplify for higher volume lead playing since they tend to be prone to feedback even more so than a selmac (at least from my experience).

Is yours an acoustic archtop or meant to be played with a mag pickup?