Part of growing older gracefully as a musician is downsizing your gear. Reasons range from a sore back to more serious stuff. Whatever your reason, if you're looking to downsize your acoustic rig and lighten your load I have good news for you. You can do it without sacrificing sound quality.
Partly through trial and error and partly through research I have assembled a lightweight and small system that sounds natural and acoustic and has enough power to play in a noisy bar. These days I rarely review gear on this blog but each component in this rig gets my enthusiastic recommendation.
In the past when weight was less of a concern I used a mixer, power amp, and speakers. It was a lot of stuff to haul and it was heavy and bulky but that was part of the price you paid to get good sound in those days.
My new compact rig includes a Waterloo guitar equipped with an LR Baggs Anthem SL pickup system. This goes directly into an AER Tommy Emmanuel amplifier. Simple!
This small, lightwight guitar and powerful little amp combine to produce a sound which exceeds my expectations. It sounds lovely! Better in fact than any of the heavy and overly complicated component PA systems that I hauled around back in the day.
When I first decided to downsize I thought I would have to sacrifice sound quality. Instead I found the most natural and musical amplified acoustic guitar sound I've ever experienced outside of a recording studio. Bonus! I'm looking forward to getting out and playing music with this rig.
Even if you're not shopping for "geezer gear" you'll appreciate the sound quality you get out of a small, simple rig like this and you'll love how easy it is to carry and set up. It just works and that frees you from tweaking sound and let's you focus more on your music.
The Waterloo, Anthem and AER amp make setting up quick and simple and the sound is awesome. I wholeheartedly recommend these products with the caveat that you should always let your ear (and budget) be your guide. Adopt a less is more philosophy and I think you'll discover as I have that you don't need a van full of gear to sound your best in 2017.
Disclaimer: I purchased this gear retail and use it by choice. I received no special consideration and these are not specially selected "review samples".
1 comment:
Heck, I have all the ingredients other than the Anthem SL. I do have the Schertler magnetic pickup with the added condenser mic. That sounds really good too, although I can't get very loud with the mic mixed in. A good thing about the soundhole setup is that I can move it between guitars. I've been wanting to try the Anthem, thanks for the post.
-Roger
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