On Wed, 21 May 2014 16:34:39 -0400, "Mr. Luddite" wrote:

On 5/21/2014 3:24 PM, Poquito Loco wrote:
On Wed, 21 May 2014 15:09:31 -0400, wrote:

On Wed, 21 May 2014 13:51:23 -0400, F*O*A*D wrote:

I like and liked pre-amplified bluegrass.

I am confused by "pre amplified bluegrass"
Do you mean hearing a group in a venue so small that they did not need
amps? I guess TV is out for you totally.
Everyone likes a small room performance. I even enjoyed Barry Manilow
at Shady Grove in Gathersburg (small dinner theater) and I hate the
dude. He did work pretty hard to put on a show. You have to when you
go from Mandy on the radio everywhere to dinner theater.

There is a lot of bluegrass played in a small venue. It's usually called 'jamming'. A bunch of
pickers get together and the only folks who can hear are sitting around right around the campsite.

It would be pretty hard for a thousand folks in lawn chairs to hear anything that wasn't amplified.



There's a big difference in what you consider "amplified".

Back in the late 1800's and up to about 1920 or so acoustic flat top
guitars were small in size. They were called "Parlor" guitars and had
strings made of animal intestines or "Gut Strings". It wasn't until
the 1920's that steel strings came into play. Steel stringed guitars
are louder but had to be built and braced differently to tolerate the
much higher string tension of steel strings. We seen more than one
rare, vintage guitar originally built for gut strings (you can use nylon
strings on them now) that were ruined because the owner tried putting
steel strings on them. Rips the bridge right off the guitar, often
taking part of the top with it. Tuned to pitch, steel strings generate
about 200lbs or more of tension that is trying to rip the bridge off the
guitar.

Anyway, when the Big Band era started in the 1920's and 1930's acoustic
guitars -- both flat tops and archtops simply weren't loud enough to be
heard along with the horns, reed instruments, drums etc. in the bands.
One of the first electrics was an acoustic archtop on which a pickup
taken from a lapsteel guitar was mounted. It became the famous "Charlie
Christian" pickup and guitar configuration. It's replacement was
another large, strange magnetic pickup that evolved into the popular P90
magnetic/electric pickups used today. We had two Gibson ES-150s at the
shop at one time ... one a Charlie Christian model and another had the
prototype P90 on it. Both were pre-WWII guitars. "ES" by the way
stands for "Electric Spanish" and Gibson first started using the "ES"
nomenclature on their guitars when the first electric acoustics were
introduced.

Meanwhile, traditional acoustic guitars (known as "flat tops") began to
grow in size in order to produce more sound. Eventually different types
of acoustic pickups were developed ... piezo transducers, under the
saddle sensors, body sensors and internal microphones. The output of
these pickups are fed into amplifiers or PA systems to increase sound
volume.

I don't particularly care for acoustic guitars with these types of
pickups in them because they alter the natural sound of the acoustic
guitar. The unique sound of a Martin or Guild becomes lost due to the
sound coloration of the pickup used. I think using a good quality
stage microphone properly placed in front of the guitar produces a much
better and authentic amplified sound of the guitar. It's also the way
they are recorded most of the time.

Solid body electric guitars are totally different. They are made to be
amplified. Oh ... and Tim's basses.

Then I don't know what Harry's talking about. If one looks at the pictures I posted, the instruments
are played with a microphone in front, in almost all cases. I didn't see any 'electric' guitars, or
guitars with wires running to amplifiers. When I say 'guitars', I mean all the stringed instruments.
I still don't understand Harry's comment about 'pre-amplified bluegrass'. The only amplification I
saw was through the PA system. I suppose this is what he doesn't like, which makes little sense.

Anyway, thank you for the history lesson, and I agree with your comment about a good quality
microphone placed properly in front of the instrument. Gettysburg uses the same sound guys year
after year, and they get rave reviews from all the performers.