D-Tar Mama Bear

Keith Murch

Has anyone tried the D-Tar Mama Bear with a Gypsy Jazz guitar? My guitar is a Dupont MD-50 with a Dupont Bigtone. I plug it into an LR Baggs Venue and and a Fishman Loudbox Mini. After trying many different DI boxes and amps, this setup is the most satisfying that I have been able to come up with so far. The LR Baggs Venue really helps boost the mids and remove the harshness of the piezo, but I am still not totally happy with the amplified sound. I notice that the Mama Bear has four piezo input selections to choose from and a Gypsy Jazz Guitar “target” instrument. This seems to have the right features for my needs so I am wondering about putting a Mama Bear between my guitar and amp, instead of my DI Box. Any experience or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.

Keith

Jose

You should try the Tone Dexter, it is very good solution, it has DI, boost and feedback filters and gives you guitar a mic sound amplified.

https://youtu.be/wEeNOPCffHo

Keith Murch

The Tone Dexter sounds very interesting.

Jose

In our band, both of us (guitar players) we use it, it is very easy to just plug and play. Here you have a video of our band so you can check it out.

https://youtu.be/7HB7Z4pbLxU

Keith Murch

Sounds great. Very realistic tone (nice playing too).

thanks, Keith

richter4208

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/100245#Comment_100245

Sounds good.......do you guys use bigtone pickups with the Tonedexter?

Jose

Yes I do but my buddy Ryan has a Mauro Freschi Guitar, I believe it came with some kind of transducer but his guitar doesn’t feedback nor mine.

Keith Murch

I would love to try a Tone Dexter before dropping $400. Unfortunately, there isn’t one in a store anywhere near me to try. It certainly seems to be the perfect tool for a Gypsy Jazz Guitar with a Bigtone. So many other pedals are designed for more common acoustic guitars. Having said that, has anyone compared the Tone Dexter to other modeling/imaging pedals such as the Fishman Aura Spectrum, Zoom AC-2, Mama Bear, etc? I realize some of these don’t have a Gypsy Jazz Guitar voice, but there may be other settings that would achieve a similar result. Any thoughts?

Keith

Buco

There's a new option, seems similar to what Tone Dexter offers at much easier to swallow price. Although it's not as feature rich to be fair. It's called Optima Air by NUX (never heard of the company til now). I just read about it last night and watched the demo video. It was impressive how the flattop sounded through the piezzo pickup, through this pedal after it was trained via the AKG microphone.

https://www.nuxefx.com/optima-air.html

jonpowl

@Buco I was having some trouble finding prices for NUX products, but just found a site that carries NUX. They didn't have a price for the Optima Air NAI-5. The Mighty Plug looks interesting.

Buco

Jon, this article says $180, that's how I first found out about it

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/nuxs-optima-air-pedal-promises-to-simulate-any-acoustic-guitar-tone

I see that they're are sold through Guitar Center, Musicians Friend, Zzounds and of course Amazon. So they're pretty well distributed. Their reviews are mostly positive too. Interesting company. They have two acoustic guitar amp models. Yes that Mighty Plug is stupendously packed with features.