On Saturday 17 January 2015 21:28:42 Bob van der Poel did opine And Gene did reply: > On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 6:39 PM, Ralf Mardorf > > <ralf.mardorf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Sat, 17 Jan 2015 20:21:17 -0500, Gene Heskett wrote: > >> > When I started engineering they > >> > already were used in studios. It's too funny that one thing didn't > >> > change, the pick ups for electrical guitars were and still are > >> > electromagnets needing special pre-amplification. > >> > >> There are some choices today, that are at times even better because > >> the pickup coils are velocity sensitive, which isn't entirely > >> suitable for a bass axe. > >> > >> I have in recent years seen several different kinds of microphones > > > > Yes, but for good old rocking sound of a solid body six string guitar > > there's still noting better than a passiv single coil or passiv > > humbucker. Especially when using passive single coils, you want good > > pre-amplification. > > _______________________________________________ > > Linux-audio-user mailing list > > Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user > > Can I mention the piezo pickups I installed in my accordion. Gawd > they sounded awful :) (Accordion wasn't bad back then when I actually > knew how to play one). You can Bob, but nomex underwear might be a good idea. :) The only piezo pickups I ever encountered were rigged so as to be so highly driven that overloading of the preamps was at about 30 db down from normal picking. Most pickers would plug them into their sears guitar amp, and of course the preamp flattopped long before it even got to anything that looks like a gain control. On an accordion I could see 30v p-p out of one, which of course also led to short life as the rochelle salt crystal wasn't designed to be driven that hard. You got the result, sad to say. Well designed electret condensers could survive that nicely. Biggest problem with the electret was the 2nd harmonic distortion when driven to higher levels. Even the legendary Altec M-21 suffered when it was driven to more than 50 volts p-p. It could do 150 p-p! The distortion comes from the square law of condenser element spacings, but it was still good enough to handle the cannons when hung 6" below the muzzle when Mercury recorded the 1812 Overture back in the later '50's. That mic, FWIW, I have had the pleasure of working with. You, unless you are an idiot, cannot do a bad recording with it. But in the late 1950's, you needed a loan shark handy to buy one, the basic unit, 20 feet of cord and its power supply were just north of $600. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user