Back with RMC Pickups

I’ve had RMC pick ups on a few of my guitars. All of my Godin Guitars of had them. I also had them on my Devoe. And most recently I had them installed on my Cordoba 45FP Flamenco Guitar with pegs. In the Cordoba I also have the L.R. Baggs lyric and blend the two to get a very realistic tone and now I have access to synthesizers through the poly Drive to enroll in GR 55 synthesizer for Guitar.

All set up

I played today at my weekly brunch gig at Coopers and enjoyed the extra textures from the GR 55. I can tell I’m going to need to do some tweaking but the potential is all there.

Roland GR 55

I have the RMC Poly Drive Mk II on my guitar stand

RMC Poly Drive Mk II

The pickups were installed by Paul Swartz at Peekamoose Guitars in NY

RMC Pickups

How I have it set up for live use.

Hears the actual setting on GR 55 from Richard see below:

RMC Pickup Settings

GR-55 with RMC-equipped guitars :

__________________________________

GK SETTINGS  as of 1/10/18

“PU”

PU type ;  PIEZO R

Scale : (instrument specific)

PU phase : NORMAL

PU direction : NORMAL

S1/S2 position : NORMAL

MORM PU gain : 0 dB

PIEZO TONE  LOW  :   0

PIEZO TONE HIGH  :   0  —> +2 or +3 with OPT-01 mkII

“DIS”

10.0 mm all strings

“SEN”

25  typical – all strings    

(fingerstyle players may need slightly higher values)

MY CLASSICAL GUITAR  w/high-tension strings (Hannabach

815-HT blue card) – your mileage may vary :

E1 = 30

B2 = 28

G3 = 26

D4 = 33

A5 = 32

E6 = 31

“VEL”

Velocity Dynamics :  4      (fine adjust using “SEN” string sensitivity)

Play-Feel         :  3

Low-Velocity Cut  :  3  (for a clean player  –  higher value if needed)

“NUA”

Nuance Dynamics   :  0

Nuance Trim       :  4

“DOW”

Shift   :   0

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It takes time to develop an ear for discerning the effect of each parameter

on the overall performance. Your energy and attention levels are also different in the studio and live on a stage. You may want to use a different guitar number (in the GK settings) for each environment.

Further, there are patch-specific settings that have great influence on the tracking perception.

For example, here are my settings below for patch  06-1  SCAT & GUITAR. After listening to that patch, I preferred blending a piano tone with the scat vocal tone since my normal pickup provides a guitar sound. It also got me working on tweaking the front end to get a decent piano sound, which is in my opinion a most important one for tracking evaluation.

As you probably know, each patch has two PCM tones and a MODELING tone in addition to the normal pickup sound. These settings do not deal with the modeling tone. Just turn it off for these experiments.

PCM 1 = TONE #   444 JAZZ SCAT 1

CHROMATIC     :   OFF

LEGATO        :   ON

VELO SENS     :    0

VELO CURVE    :    4

NUANCE        :   ON  (turn it off & on and compare the difference)

PORTAMENTO SW :  OFF

I haven’t changed the rest of the parameters for this tone

PCM 2 = TONE # 010  PIANO 1

CHROMATIC     :   ON

LEGATO        :   ON

VELO SENS     :    0

VELO CURVE    :    4

NUANCE        :   ON  (turn it off and hear the difference)

PORTAMENTO SW :  OFF

I haven’t changed the rest of the parameters for this tone

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I recommend listening to a single PCM tone at a time so you get deeper into it and find the most comfortable settings. When you have them both tweaked individually for good tracking & play-feel, you can start to combine them.

There’s A LOT of adjustability in this unit and many users are likely to be frustrated by this complexity. However, over time the best settings will become known in the specialized forum communities and then most players will find what they’re looking for.

All pitch-detection systems work best when the string-contacting surfaces of the pick and/or the edge of the nails are nick-free and highly polished.

What sounds good tracks well…

I hope the information provided will be helpful.

Let me know if some of these settings work for you.

Best regards,

RMC Richard McClish

Grace Designs Felix “Tames RMC Gold & Poly-Drive II”

I think I’ve rekindled my affection towards my DeVoe Blanca with RMC-Pickups & Poly-Drive II, DPA-4099G, and Grace Designs Felix PreAmp. The Grace Designs Felix Preamp was able to tame some of the piezo quack that drove me nuts and with the DPA blended in I can get very natural tone and loud without feedback. 

    
   

New Rack

So my live rack is complete. I start with my Lester DeVoe Blanca outfitted with RMC Pickups or A Miguel Rodriquez guitar with Fishman Prefix Premium Blend Preamp. On the DeVoe I use a Bartlett Audio Guitar Mic B. Both guitars then go to the Rane MP13 preamp. The RMC pickups do go though a RMC Poly Drive II. The Poly Drive II spits signal pickup and signal for Roland GI 20 that is hooked up via MIDI to a Roland XV2020 Synth. Then out to a channel on Mackie 802VLZ. (Back to Guitar) the pickup is run to Rane AP13 as well as the Barlett Mic they also then get run through DBX 266XL Compression Gate/Exp and then to the Mackie 802VLZ on channel 2&3. For affects I am using the Lexicon MX300 with pre set #7 or #1 then mixer goes out to two QSC K10’s

MOTU Track 16 Review “I Love It”

I love the MOTU Track 16 the below first file is with the Track 16 into my MBP (Mac Book Pro) running OS 10.7.4 to Pro Tools 9.0.6 and I used the API plugins from Waves. Mic used was the DPA 4099. The one thing that I did do was a fresh restart and power up on the Track 16 and now there’s no hiss or noise in any of the signals. The second track is with my (MP) Mac Pro OS 10.6.7 and Pro Tools 9.0.6 running on fire wire. The Motu Cue Mix sounds great too and I will be using it when I head out to CA later in the month to use as my live set up. Im going to try using the MIDI in line with my Roland GI-20 Interface to use to trigger synth sounds such as Spectrasonics Omnisphere.

Update:
After a week of use. 8.7.12 I have to say this really is one great pice of gear. I have been using the MOTU Track 16 with Cue Mix and for Live its awesome. I have in mic channel one my DPA 4099 G mic and in Chanel 2 from the RMC Pickups and Poly-Drive II to the Fishman Aura Spectrum DI then in to the input for ZERO (0) Latency with EQ and Reverb, Then I run Pro Tools 9.0.6 and use Omnisphere and Stylus RMX and run them thorough the MOTU Track 16 and out to my main monitors for an amazingly great live sounding set up.

What some of my friends are saying about the MOTU Track 16 after listing to the finished result:
Vic
I think you have found a winner
Sounds great very clean and I think there is a tad.of high end detail not
Heard since you had the ensemble
(Silver Sound Taz)
Hello Victor,
Sounds lovely. I was more taken by the sound of the guitar…which tells me
the quality is great.
(Mike)
Sounds excellent! I would not have guessed that is was recorded on such a small device.
Peace
(Jay S)

The folks at Sweetwater were great in helping me get the MOTU Track 16 Mark Magdich 1800-222-4700×1265 and the flex pay makes it easier on the wallet.

I received my MOTU Track 16 it looks nice. I am using it with my 2011 MBP (Mac Book Pro 13) and Mac Pro. I found the install to be a little tricky in that the cd did not have the drivers that were needed so the Track 16 would be recognized. After about 10 min I was able to get the MBP to recognize the Track 16. I found that using Fire wire to hook up the Track 16 works on both computers but while using buss power on MBP it seems that the mic and line in are a bit nosey, may be the drivers I have a tech support question in the cue. I am waiting a bit before I conclude my opinion. Check back later.

MOTU Track 16 with DPA 4099G and RMC Pickups

Ive been recently streamling my live set up. Im using the Fishman SA 220 amp, with my DeVoe Blanca that has the RMC Pickups with a Ploly Drive II preamp (off board not on the guitar) I was using the Fishman Aura Spectrum DI but this weekend I tried using just the Poly-Drive and the DPA 4099g mic and really liked the sound. I will be using the MOTU Track 16 as my mixer with the Waves API plug ins and run that to the Fishman SA 220. The RMC Ploly Drive will conect to a Roland GI-20 gutiar midi interface that will Triger Spectrasonics Omnispher running on a Mac Book Pro using Apple’s Main Stage.

Live DeVoe Blanca Setup

I’m now using on my DeVoe Blanca RMC Acoustic Gold Tall Pickups RMC Poly-Drive-II, Fishman Aura Spectrum DI, Roland GI-20, Roland XV 5050 and a Ernie Ball Volume Pedal and a Roland EV-5 Volume Pedal all of this goes to a Fishman SA 220 amp. I am very happy with the sound of the pickups from RMC and the Aura Spectrum. It really sounds very (mic) like with out feedback problems.