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Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival - What the hell is that?
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. |
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