Whats your Favorite Hex PU?

Started by Elantric, March 09, 2008, 08:39:50 PM

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Elantric

This Poll is focused to those who have actually tried both Mag Hex PUs ( GK-3) types, and Piezo PU Types ( RMC, Ghost)

Which type is YOUR favorite with the VG-99?
I'd like the voters to be VG-99 users who have actually tried/own both mag and piezo type Hex PUs.

Vote for your favorite PU because you actually tried both mag and piezo hex PU types with YOUR VG-99 under many conditions.

I encourage everyone to list reasons why this is your favorite Hex PU for the way you use the VG-99.

I don't really care how your preferred Hex PU choice works with your Axon , GR-20 or VG-8.

Vote for your favorite VG-99 PU, even if its the one on your shopping list.   

I realize piezos may work better on other systems but lets focus on real world experience from users of both types when used with the VG-99.

Feel free to leave comments below on why you feel the way you do.

mooncaine

I'm sorry, I've already goofed things up. I didn't realize until after I voted that the text below the poll included rules on who should vote. I assumed the text beneath the poll would be forum posts in response.

I'm sorry.

You should subtract my vote from your final tally. I voted for the GK-2A, but I shouldn't have, I now realize, because your poll rules ask that we only vote if we've tried both mag and piezo hex pickups.

Elantric

#2
Only You can change your vote  - simply click "remove vote"  see lower right of the poll results - if you voted by mistake. Even I can not remove or alter  your vote. and you can always change your vote.  Lets say in a couple weeks you try a piezo PU with your VG-99 and you find you prefer it to your GK-2A, simply come back and change your vote.

GeePeeAxe

I use 2 hex-guitars with Sound Garage pickups.
They both work great with the 99, also GtMidi
works to my satisfaction.

Too bad that Sound Garage in no more available!

mooncaine

Quote from: sustainiac on March 10, 2008, 12:59:44 AM
Only You can change your vote  - simply click "remove vote"  see lower right of the poll results - if you voted by mistake. Even I can not remove or alter  your vote. and you can always change your vote.  Lets say in a couple weeks you try a piezo PU with your VG-99 and you find you prefer it to your GK-2A, simply come back and change your vote.

Great! This is the first web poll I've seen where I can change my answer. Good idea for a question like this one.

fredo

#5
As stated here : https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=573.0 , regarding sound, I am 100% pro GK-3 (compared to RMC Godin LGXT)....
To bad it is so ugly and uncomfortable, especially when mounted on Les Paul type guitars (angled neck) due to string-body spacing.
Fredo.

stag

Quote from: fredo on March 24, 2008, 01:05:53 PM
As stated here : https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=573.0 , regarding sound, I am 100% pro GK-3 (compared to RMC Godin LGXT)....
To bad it is so ugly and uncomfortable, especially when mounted on Les Paul type guitars (angled neck) due to string-body spacing.
Fredo.

  Hello:
  How do you compare them regarding MIDI conversion.
  My xtsa behave a lot better with the GI-20. ???

  Thank you.

fredo

Hi Stag,

I just compared the Guitar-to-midi feature of the 99 with GK pickup and RMC system, and again, the GK pickup is doing better...
While midi is more than usable with the GK pickup (fast tracking and no ghost note if you play "clean"), with the Godin LGXT, I have to lower the sensitivity a lot, and still, I have a lot ghost notes, especially when I put my right hand on the bridge...
BTW, I have to say that the 99 is my first guitar to midi converter. I never had a chance to use a GI-20 or an Axon, son I have no point of comparison.

Fredo.

vpanos

Hi there,
I would like to ask you if you know the difference between GK2A and GK3 regarding the sound.

Cheers
vpanos
Carvin Bolt custom guitar, internal GK2A, VG88, VG99, FC300, ROLAND KC-300

Brent Flash

Quote from: vpanos on March 31, 2009, 08:20:25 AM
Hi there,
I would like to ask you if you know the difference between GK2A and GK3 regarding the sound.

Cheers
vpanos
From what I have gleaned from the experts that have both there is no difference in sound.

dayn

I have used both a GK-2a and the RMC pickups with a VG-99. I much prefer the GK. They sounded VERY different, even when the VG_99 was set to the appropriate setting, though that may have also been the guitar they were on. BOth Sounded good, I just thought the GK was more responsive and provided better tone with the electric gutiar models.

vanceg

Quote from: Brent Flash on March 31, 2009, 08:34:10 AM
From what I have gleaned from the experts that have both there is no difference in sound.

I've got both and notice little difference in tone.  But, they are on different guitars...so, not a scientific test!

Vance

clamhands

#12
Quote from: dayn on February 24, 2010, 09:21:34 AM
I have used both a GK-2a and the RMC pickups with a VG-99. I much prefer the GK. They sounded VERY different, even when the VG_99 was set to the appropriate setting, though that may have also been the guitar they were on. BOth Sounded good, I just thought the GK was more responsive and provided better tone with the electric gutiar models.

I have both a RR strat and a Ghost/Floyd equipped guitar and I voted for the GK.  While I strongly favor the Ghost's wider dynamic and frequency response when creating and playing my own patches, the GK wins for me because:

* I don't have a lot of time to create patches so I rely heavily on the VG-99s ROM patches and the kindness of others that contribute patches here (which reminds me...I need to hit the applaud button for A to the T yet again).  With the RR strat's GK,  I feel confident that I'm starting with a sound that's close to what the programmer intended (with the Ghost, I can usually assume that any clean and/or accoustic patches will sound pretty far off and I will need to spend substantial time "guessing and tweaking").

* The GK is much much much less microphonic.  While the RMC VG-99 input mod helps *hugely* at filtering out the really horrendous low frequency noise and subsequent tracking issues, there's still a fair amount of thumps from handling noise and creaking from trem bar and bridge/spring movement that come through  loud and clear at the VG-99's output.

musicamex

greetings from PV mexico-----this thread is all very interesting.  i started with a gk2 and gk2a mounted on 2 different guitars (strat copy and ovation breadwinner) and had lots of tracking problems with my gr33, and less but still some unwanted sound problems vg88 (as well as with the early axons).  i also used an axon mag hex pickup on both a guitar and bass with similar results.  i build hex custom guitars now because of those experiences and have used both ghost and rmc and like them both better than the mag pickups.  i evolved to a vg99 with a fc300 and never went back to try the mag pickups for the 99, but this thread makes me want to try them again, despite the bulky ugliness of them.  i could try a build in mag unit if they sound good enough to warrant using them again. since i still have 3 or 4 old mag units laying around i suppose i could even add the surface mount gk2 or 2a or axon to my test guitar and do an A?B? test with a my roland 13 pin switching unit and the vg99.

i play allot of slide and that is where i really noticed a difference. glass. metal, ceramic all gave me lots of "surprises" i didn't intend to play with the mag pickups but with the piezos and a good setup, i regularly fool other musicians who think i am tuned to an open tuning.  i do use flatwound ss strings that are my brand, made especially to my specs and that could also be helping eliminate quacks and unwanted ghost notes.

my test platform guitar was  built in 2003 from scratch with a ghost with hexpander, ghost saddles on a hipshot bridge and a kent armstrong hotrails type humbucker with coil tap and it has all been absolutely problem free.  i also like rmc and have used their system on 3 guitars i sold.  i do really like the plug and play of the ghost.  very easy installation and like i mentioned zero.zero problems on my very first one and i am 3/4 of the way through the second set of frets. 

off the subject: i also can't say enough about rugged quality of roland/edirol and even most of my boss gear. it is well built and designed for a working musician.  my vg88 has followed me to 2-5 gigs a week since the early 90's when i got it. the 88 has survived the coastal mexican margarita tourist bar gig circuit which has to be the ultimate proving ground. so far i dont gig with the 99 (it seems more vulnerable on the edge of a durnken dance floor) and the only thing that has failed in over 2 years is the patch number led on my fc 300 dropped a couple of segments.  i hope this is something rare.  if roland was nice enough to send me a new lcd  i would replace it, but it still works well enough to figure out what it is supposed to read so i let the warranty lapse without sending it back from mexico.

time to do some more testing i guess.

jburns

i have a hunch the gk's work better for the 99 being designed with it and all, but over all, esp with midi equipment, ghosts are where its at. theyre the only piezos that use crystals made for tracking & sound quality. most other companies are all using generic piezo crystals. for example (my own experience) a gr33 with a gk unit tracks like pure crap but with the ghost its flawless because the crystal are SUPPOSED to be under the saddle not in front of the bridge like the gk pickups. the idea was crappy from roland but had alot of practical use for ppl that dont want to change their bridge or w/e reason. however on the 99 the gk does a fine job -cheers roland- and the graphtech ghost has minor issues as mentioned "handling noise and creaking from trem bar and bridge/spring movement that come through loud and clear". something im working to fix in my setup.

heres MY main thing that ive read in some topics here and disagree with and WHY i use the ghost. i cant play without a floyd its just how it is for me. the strings coming out of the saddles at the angle the bridge is pushed all the way down-yes you lose signal, but keep in mind on analog signal with any whammy bridge the sound ALSO becomes inaudible when pushed all the way down as normal pickups dont respond to strings that loose anyway. id say the ghost lets me dive down further actually. im not a "diver" i just love fluttering and really beat up bridges this way. harmonics and muted strings no matter what have sound better with the ghost for me too. alot better.

now with a gk pickup if i go about 4 halfsteps down the strings will hit the hex pickups and will magnetically get stuck, even if they dont stick and normally do, you hear them clash against the gk pickup. whats the best way to install a gk pickup??? closest to the bridge and closet to the string. this makes any incline of a double-locking bridge impossible because the strings while being raised will scrape back onto the gk pickup. retarded! might as well not use a floyd at all! with the lb63 bridge i have NONE of these problems. thank you graphtech. its not perfect with the 99 but nothings perfect. theres a company called shadowsky that had a floyd like this in the 80s but ive loked around and found nothing. been waitin for a company to get with this idea. so its really personal on how and why your using pickups/bridges. since i only use floyds, its my only choice.

aliensporebomb

#15
jburns:  I also am a Floyd devotee and have been for over 20 years.



Weirdly I don't have a lot of problems with the strings affixing to the hex pickup, I've got it slightly lowered and the bridge slightly raised and found a good "mid point" for everything to be.

My music projects online at http://www.aliensporebomb.com/

GK Devices:  Roland VG-99, Boss GP-10, Boss SY-1000.

jburns

#16
when i had my gr33 i could never get around that problem, at the end of my g33 days i had a plastic cover to stop the strings from catching, but still got the noise pulling the trem all the way back. the gk's do seem to be way better for the 99 which has alot of options for getting rid of that whole situation. if raising the bridge doesnt effect your action thats great. when i used ibanez rgs it kinda threw my setup off putting a quarter inch raise in the neck heel, just too much for me haha. im using setnecks now so i didnt wanna attempt any gk-ing when i bought the 99. gk-3 will fall short on any other device but as far as the 99 goes i think i might go to the gk-3 on my next gtr.

i liked the gk 3s better then the 2a's. to me they seemed slightly fatter/fuller. the vol knob placement is waay better on the 3 too.
wheras the 2a's seemed a bit brighter and clear. subtle differenes that i cant say ive messed with in anything other then the 33's.

but i stand by my ghost for playing quality since i view it to have more dynamic in picking.

musicamex

hi jburns.

the ghost, rmc etc are very different from roland, yamaha, and axon pickups.  the former are piezo and the latter are magnetic.  one of the early problems was caused by a magnetic pickup having a latency issue due to the translation of the vibrating string above the saddle into a  solid note signal the processor could understand and further do what the player intended it to do when they picked the string.  this used to be 2-3 cycles, so low notes inherently had more latency than high ones.  with a piezo (ghost rmc et al) the translation is far more instantaneous since the piezo saddle vibrates the instant the string is picked.  i find the piezo pickups also have far less adjacent string cross over and far more dynamics when using palm muting.  i have zero experience with baggs and fishman piezos for hex output. (i accept free samples for testing ;) )

i'm not sure where you got the "generic" crystal information.  when i order bulk piezo saddles from ghost they are all shipped in the same bag.  there aren't E, A, D, G, B, e saddles---all come in the same bag.  RMC saddles are a bit different in their placement of the piezo element in the saddle but the overall quality of the individual piezo elements are more than adequade for their job in both ghost and RMC.  when you think about it, a piezo strip, like used under an electroacoustic saddle is in most cases one strip (ovation and perhaps others used 6 summed piezo element signals in their EA guitars).  the same strip works easily for the entire dynamic range of the guitar.  the piezos aren't rocket science and even if there is allot of variations in quality, you can bet at least ghost and rmc aren't vastly different in their approach to using quality components.  they both have excellent reputations.  the best processor in the world can't sound good if you feed it bad info. being on the cutting edge of guitar technology,  they know the GIGO rule better than most.

jburns

got that info from the owner of graphtech. is he lying? could be lol. a good enough sales pitch to get me to buy it =/

cant talk about rmc cause ive never used them but for fishman a luthier friend of mine, in battle for almost 40yrs and highly experienced, has told me numerous times that those cheap piezos cost 2 cents to make (yea obviously not rocket science like u said haha) and he usually has to send 4 or 5 back till he gets a good one. that guy wouldnt lie to me, eveytime i need help or advice hes always on the money.

musicamex

Quote from: jburns on September 03, 2010, 02:10:08 PM
got that info from the owner of graphtech. is he lying? could be lol. a good enough sales pitch to get me to buy it =/

cant talk about rmc cause ive never used them but for fishman a luthier friend of mine, in battle for almost 40yrs and highly experienced, has told me numerous times that those cheap piezos cost 2 cents to make (yea obviously not rocket science like u said haha) and he usually has to send 4 or 5 back till he gets a good one. that guy wouldnt lie to me, eveytime i need help or advice hes always on the money.

no one is lying.  there might be some "selling" going on.  you aren't far off on your price for basic piezo elements.  but like many modern electronic components, in manufacturing quantities there is little difference in price until you get into very high tolerance components.  competition is fierce and manufacturers will not tolerate a bad supplier, because one bad resistor that could cost less than a penny or two could cause an expensive complicated circuit to fail.  so when you are talking about a 2 cent piezo (actually more like 20 cents) why wouldn't you use a manufacturer with a good reputation that sells "consistent" quality even if it costs double?  what difference would $1.20 make for a  set of 6 saddles at such a critical point in the circuit?  

i have spoken at length with lee from graphtec (he is no longer with them) and their other techs at NAMM over several the last 5years in anaheim.  i also have met personally with and had a very informative discussion with mr Richard Mc Clish (RMC one of the more interesting v guitar people i have met); both companies through emails and in person.  these guys really know their stuff.  they know the entire signal chain begins with the saddle.  i have not had a single piezo pickup from graphtec fail and no new pickups i have used from RMC have failed and only one piezo saddle from rmc that has been on my bench needed to be replaced.  it was one of godin's very early multiac steel string acoustics.  it had been gigged hard and put up drunk, so i won't make a judgement about the exact reason it failed..  like i said i don't have any experience with the fishman or baggs saddles. I WOULD REALLY LIKE FEEDBACK RE FAILURES OF PIEZO SADDLES, ANY MAKE.  either i am having some really great luck or your luthier friend could have run into a bad batch?   were these piezo saddles  or acoustic guitar strip piezos? i know fishman piezo products hold a pretty nice part of the pie  the guitar OEM so i would appreciate feedback from someone that has used them. baggs too please.

jburns

the acoustic piezos. i think the problem was he was getting weak signals and distorted artifacts and always had to keep sending them back/reinstalling until he got clean ones.

musicamex

jburns, thanks for your reply.  i noticed in the survey here no one marked the fishman box.  maybe there was an early problem that has kept them off of the radar..there are a couple of fishman patents that go way back for variations of piezo pickups so i am surprised their QC didn't catch their rejects.

i learned the hard way with acoustic piezo strips that they don't like to be bent very much and the wire connections can be pretty fragile.  on some guitars like a takemini 12 string i did a setup on this morning, the piezo strip is housed in metal cover that the saddle clips into to protect the piezo strip.  fishman, like almost everyone has overseas factories and a new person on the assembly line could screw up a number or pieces really quickly on high production items before the error is caught.  i'm almost positive both graphtec and rmc use something like an o-scope test to be sure each saddle is "alive" on delivery.  tarina and or richard, please correct me if i'm wrong and if you are monitoring this board.

tbuechse

Hi,

PRODUCTION?
The main focus for purchaisng this device was guitar production at its best. Good sound and Master Guitar for MIDI. Here´s my experience on this. I try to get the VG99 involved in a complex way. Some problems occured:

GK3:
The point is that the gk-3 pick ups sound really good with vg 99, but the look is not the best. I do a lot with Midi as well and I feel like having best results here with the gk-3 as well.

GUITAR PICK UPS:
There seems to be a problem with the GUITAR Setting on the GK, where every sound is cut in my case. The Pickup sound of the guitar as well, although switching to AUTO Mode on the GK Settings. Only when I choose OFF here, I can hear the sound of my real world pickups. And I want MIDI as well. Unfortunately there is a noise on the guitars normal Pick ups when having connected the VG via USB to the computer.

FREEWAY SA:
On the other hand I bought the Godin freeway sa which seems not to be the best choice for combining it to the vg. The guitar is perfect but Midi tracking and sound are not really cool in combination with vg 99.

My solution while using the freeway then was not to use the MIDI-Out for sound, but the normal Pickups of the guitar, which I connect to the "guitar in" on the Rear side of the VG99.  I was trying a lot and was not very lucky in combining MIDI and Sound tasks of the VG in all possible ways (not only with GK-3). Otherwise it would  be a shame to be stuck to the GK-3, but this seems to be Rolands first choice.

HELP NEEDED:
If there is anybody working with the VG in this way please let me know, where to find necessary switches and clicks to get my Freeway SA involved and btw get rid of the annoying noise on the GUITAR IN.

At least: I like the VG for its possibilities, so let´s get them to work ;-))

Thanks very much for your time and help

Tim


nelcatjar

Ok, I don't mean to seem vain, but any piezo is better looking that having that big GK3 and wires hanging off the guitar.  The GK3 is just ugly unless one has a black guitar. So what ever peizo works the best get's my vote, but  I've only usd RMC pickups, so I don't know that my vote applies. 
Q: What's the difference between a musician and a large pizza?
A:  A large pizza can feed a family of 4.

Brian Moore i88.13, Godin xtSA, GR-55, Boss ME-70.

tonyknight

I don't want to vote as I don't have any experience with any of them yet, but it would be nice to see the results :-) I don't think I saw anyone writing about the Yamaha for example...