K&K Duotone with an Acoustic Tech21 Fly Rig?

[deadend3]

Anyone try these two together? I have with very mixed results and wondering if I should try something else. I believe the fly rig has the correct impedance for the pickup (1m Ohm) but I have to roll the mids basically to off to get something close and even then it sounds pretty bad. I've used the fly rig with both a PA and a Loudbox with similar results.

[sounds_good]

I am not familiar with K&K pick up Tech 21 Fly Rig.

The Fly Rig preamp looks like good quality equipment.
I would not expect to find trouble there.

Here is my guess. I would check this first. The K&K Duo has two
pickups. I expect the two are wired to a stereo jack on the instrument.
However, the Fly Rig is a mono preamp. Maybe you are expecting
plug and play. So, you plug one end of your guitar cord into the jack
on the mandolin and the other end into the Fly Rig preamp. That is
an obvious thing to do, but the result is shorting out one of the pickups.

Do you have some stereo head phones with a 1/4 inch plug? The jack
on the instrument is expecting to see that kind of plug, sometimes called
"TRS". Compare that to the guitar cord, and you will see the difference.

How can we test to see if that is the case? There are cables TRS to dual TS
that look like this and cost less than $10.

You could use a cable like that to test for two output signals. If you find
that you need a little more help for what to do with the two signals. Do
you have a friendly local sound guy to talk with?

All right, that was my guess for where to look first.

By the way, from my browser I could not access the albums on your website
through Apple. I did listen to "The Galway Girl" on youtube. I suppose that
was recorded in the studio. In my opinion the mandolin was sounding rather
thin. I think I would check up on this pretty soon.

I hope to check back here and find you have the problem sorted out.

[pops1]

The K&K pickups are not wired in stereo, but are simply wired parallel. No special cord needed. I would look to your settings. I use a K&K with a RedEye, it only has a treble control. Sounds great. I have never needed a lot of EQ to get a good sound.

[deadend3]

Thanks, I have read online where a lot of people who use the K&K also use the Red Eye with very good results. I'll most likely check that out as an option.

For those who may be interested I found this page which I thought did a nice job of explaining "impedance" as a variable for getting a good tone when plugged in.

[sounds_good]

The K&K pickups are not wired in stereo, but are simply wired parallel. No special cord needed. I would look to your settings. I use a K&K with a RedEye, it only has a treble control. Sounds great. I have never needed a lot of EQ to get a good sound.

Well, it was just a guess. Still, checking the K&K website it appears
some dual pickups are wired in stereo. It is probably worth checking.

[pops1]

It comes with a stereo endpin jack to be used with another system. The pickups are not wired in stereo, and if used alone without another system a mono cord will work with the stereo endpin jack.

[Rob Roy]

The Fly Rig is really designed for electric guitar pickups, a totally different critter. In general, electric guitar amps don't give you a natural sound for acoustics.

I looked up your Duotone, it's actually a two transducer version of the pure mini that they specially produced for Bedell guitars. So two transducers wire separately to a stereo output jack. You should be able to mix the two lines together and go through one preamp together, which is how regular K&K mandolin transducers are set up.

Mandolin is hard to get a nice pickup sound out of IMO. They inherently have such a strong attack that they tend to be piercing and overpowering in a sound system. A small amount of carefully adjusted digital delay or reverb can be helpful. When I played mandolin in a contradance band, I much preferred a stand mounted mic I could move in and out on. Good luck on your sound journey.

[pops1]

I looked it up too, and K&K says to use the K&K preamp, which has a mono input. If the pickups are wired in stereo you would need two preamps and K&K does not mention anything about them being in stereo. The stereo jack is because they are meant to be used in unison with another system. Then one system on one + lead, the other system on the other + lead. It would be easy to look at how the pickup's are wired at the jack and you would know. Let's think about this why would you put one transducer on the side with maybe a magnetic pickup? Both pickups have to go to the preamp and I don't think K&K would make it so you need two preamps. the one they send you to in their page is a single belt preamp. I have installed many K&K pickups and have a stereo jack in my mandolin, but my pickups are not wired in stereo, nor have I seen any from the factory wired in stereo.

[deadend3]

The Fly Rig is really designed for electric guitar pickups, a totally different critter. In general, electric guitar amps don't give you a natural sound for acoustics.

They make one specific for acoustic guitars.