Hi Everyone,
I posted 4 weeks ago about my first banjo, a beautiful Sullivan Bardstown Banjo and after much deliberation and research about different amplification methods I settled on the Pickup the World system.
I found there is so little information about different methods to amplify the banjo in a live, loud band setting so I decided to make a little install and sound test video comparing the Pickup the World system to a few mics I had lying around. Fishman and LR Baggs have a few videos online but to be honest I didn't really trust them.... (LR Baggs video had mics in the room shown during the live band "demo" for example)
There are a few samples online of different systems by us average joes but I didn't find a lot of rigour behind the sound demos i..e pickup plugged into a guitar amp and then recorded using an iPhone. Hard to tell exactly what things might turn out with that method. I tried to keep this video pretty clean, and I recordeded one take simultaneously through 3 different mics and the pickup the world system through my mixer..
Overall I think it is a great, flexible system. I also play guitar in this band and can 100% just plug my banjo into my guitar pedal board (thanks to the MiSi Active Preamp), disengage my Strymon Irdium amp modeler, tap on a bit of EQ and I am good to go to play banjo for a song or two and then switch right back.
I'll be playing a few songs at a gig the end of this month with this setup and will try to follow up with another sound sample of the band with banjo in the mix.
Anyway, hope this helps some people out there maybe in the same situation as me!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cWqR9UMeRg&ab_channel=CountryAuxPlayer
Edited by - DCFanatic on 01/26/2023 19:41:15
You're getting a nice amplified sound out of that pickup in your demo, sounds good!
I tried a PUTW banjo pickup a number of year ago and really enjoyed the sound of it, but I found that it would sometimes hum rather badly. It would sound fine at the house, but if I was playing out and plugged the PA or my acoustic amp into the wall somewhere where the grounding (I'm assuming) was questionable it would hum like crazy. I tired all kinds of different things to stop this but was never successful. I quit using it because I was never sure how it was going to go.
Yours sounds good. I hope you have a better go of it.
Edited by - jimbopicks on 01/27/2023 05:35:09
There is a nice sound with just the pickup, but a noticeable increase in sustain. You did a great job of keeping the comparisons as close as possible. Thank you for posting.
