As some of you know, i am pursuing the path of being a one man band. With an acoustic guitar this should be quite an easy task. Since i had the idea for a re-plugged sound a few years ago, things became a bit more complicated ;)
Using Fingerstyle percussive techniques to produce the back beat, got it's limitations in sound. Till now i have played around with several versions of Midi Triggers, but these days i made my last idea, i had a half year ago, work. Incorporating a ddrum Trigger and Module finally did the trick to make the snare sound more snary! i had to kill two Piezo Triggers along the way to get it right.
At this point my Guitar (a Martin DCPA 5K) got three pickup systems. First is the standard built in Pick up. That's where i get the strings from. Second is an additional Microphone (AKG C411) i placed inside the body to get the percussive part. The third one is now a drum trigger, solely to trigger a snare sample for the carpet sound.
I still have to think about hiding the cables, but as i don't want to put holes in the guitar, i guess it will stay this way, with a kind of 'cyberpunky' look :)
If you take a closer look at the image you will see the three cords, one for each pickup, run along the carpet. The ddrum Trigger is placed inside the sound hole, around the spot where i use to snap the guitar with my fingernail for the snare sound (the marks expose where i like to hit it).
The Drum Trigger goes to a ddrum Trigger Module connected to a small Akai Sampler (Bottom of the Rack)
The Mixer takes all the Signals i get from the Guitar, and those are quite a lot:
Two from the Akai Sampler, and one from the built in Microphone.
Another two come from a guitar Preamp (mostly my old reliable Line6 P.O.D. 2).
A further one is a direct signal from the standard Pickup, and one more from an Octaver to get some Bass.
Before the standard Pickup gets into the DI Box to distribute the Signals, it goes through a Boss VE 500 Vocal Processor, to provide the correct Harmony Vocals, when using this feature.
So far i can only say, it's f... great fun playing with that sound, and as soon as the new EP is finished, i will do a Live Stream go give you a listen.
Have a rocking great day my Peepz!