 Bartolini Pickup Customer Review by Acousphere
Hi ! This is Acousphere's guitarist Shige Okuzawa.
My guitar hero is Tuck Andress.
That's why I choose Gibson L-5CES for my main guitar.
But normally L-5 has passive type pickups that is not gives us Tuck like tone.
Tuck Andress guitar has hi quality hi-fi sound like active acoustic guitar.
His secret of pickup is using active pickup on his L-5.
It looks 1CTA pickup mounted.
But inside he puts buffer pre-amps with battery.
It turns out active pickup sound.
Any way that's difficult customize for me.
Also his pre-amp is prototype.
So I choose Bartolini TXE pickup.
Model TXE made from 1CTA.
Putting active pre-amp on 1CTA.
Please check Bartolini website for more details.
I mount TXE on my L-5CES.
Let me explain how I feel.
Character
Mr Bartolini explain TXE cocept on his website.
He said TXE is active type of 1CTA.
1CTA is design for Tuck Andress.
Tuck said him to wind same times of wire to each coil.
That makes pickup sound flat.
So I can say 1CTA is just flatted pickup.
It is not in "tuning" by pickup builder.
That's why TXE is too sensitive to play.
This pickup is difficult to use.
Tone
It's tremendously flat !
But please do not buy this straight.
By contraries TXE gives us unbalance tone which guitars originally have.
So Bartolini TXE doesn't give us flat sound.
TXE is "flat designed" pickup that's all.
But that concept gives us ultimate hi-fi sound.
I've never heard hi-fi tone like this.
It's tricky.
Signal/Noise
TXE runs on two 9V battery.
So worked by 18V.
It gives us fat and powerful sound.
Noise is very low.
Compare to EMG pickup
TXE has clearly-separated sound in each strings than EMG pickup.
EMG is more like mixed sound in each strings.
I used to use both pickup.
From my experience, EMG is plain pickup.
EMG gives us warm and well united string sound.
Good for accompaniment or backing.
As I said TXE has separated sound.
It's good for solo guitar.
You can have separated bass, chord and melody from one guitar.
TXE is like full orchestra sound.
If you work very hard on this pickup.
You will be great player !
How I feel on stage
TXE has big dynamics on tone and volume.
So if you use it on stage, Dynamics effecters are required.
Such as compressor limiter or leveler.
Ask engineer to put dynamics effect on your line.
Postscript
If you wanna play guitar like Tuck Andress,
Please try TXE or EMG both.
EMG is good for beginning.
Also please try playing your guitar with SR system.
Guitar amps usually designed for passive pickup guitars.
Using SR component is important for your development of guitar technic.
Tuck said, "If I can do it, Anybody else can do it"
Please try Tuck like tone ! |
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