Playing an acoustic instrument in a loud environment is always a challenge. Tangleweed tried playing shows with a stereo pair of condenser mics, but we weren’t able to cut it in loud bars. We tried using condensers on our instruments, but we suffered through some ear-splitting blasts of feedback at the hands of incompetent sound engineers. We finally gave up and started going with pickups and preamps for most of our shows.

Long before I joined Tangleweed, I used Fishman pickups on my mandolins, and ran them through a Trace Elliott acoustic preamp. The resulting sound bore only superficial resemblance to an acoustic instrument. The low end was boomy, the high end shrill. I had to compensate by running everything through a compressor to cut the sustain, and use a volume pedal to manage dynamics. (more…)