singemonkey wrote
But a mic'd up acoustic at a show seems to me no different from listening to a recording of an acoustic instrument and, depending on the sensitivity of the mic, captures more of that acoustic dynamic than any other kind of amplification - which we'd all admit is a necessary evil for a wide range of performance contexts.
So my contention is that, if you can't mic up, an electric doing what it does best is a much better option than an acoustic guitar doing a poor simulation of it's acoustic sound. Pete's ES330, for example, is an acoustic guitar (thinline admittedly) with great magnetic pickups that give it a warm, smooth sound. I'd always prefer a guitar like that to a poorly simulated "acoustic" sound.
Live sound is a compromise for acoustic guitars, and I think especially so if you are playing as a part of an ensemble. In such cases you may want to compromise the fidelity of the sound in order to get it to cut through everything else that is going on.
I guess all I'm saying is that my preference would always be for specialised - designed to be amplified - guitars for "acoustic" music that must be amplified live. But if I needed to use a flat-top acoustic for that, I'd avoid a piezo pickup, or some of the other dodgy pickups, and use either a fishman aura type setup, or a magnetic pickup (hey, that worked pretty well for the Beatles, didn't it?) to get a less plastic sound.
Technology has moved on just a little since the late 60s ? The piezo pickups have got a lot better, but are still not 100% convincing. I recently had a Baggs Dual Source system fitted to the Morgan. When I did the set up with the technician who installed it we started off running just the UTS component of the system and I was pretty impressed at how good this sounded.
Couple with pickup systems you can get today with a specialised acoustic (yes, yes... I know) guitar amp and you can get a pretty good sound. NOT as a good as a guitar miced up in a studio with a capable engineer on the desk, but still pretty good.
IMO even with mics acoustic guitars don't sound as good as they used to. I think this is down to the construction of studios, where you don't get big rooms with their own natural ambience as often as you did in the 60s and 70s. Joe Boyd talks about how engineer John Woods used to move players around the Sound Techniques studio using the different ambient conditions created by the various ceiling levels within that studio. He also believes that one of the reasons for the success of the "Buena Vista Social Club" album was that it was recorded in a very good (but, he says, unforgiving) acoustic space in an old studio in Havana.
All of this, of course, depends on what sound you are wanting to achieve. I've seen Richard Thompson playing "acoustic" live 3 times now, and it doesn't sound exactly like an acoustic guitar, and maybe that's not his aim. For a start he makes a lot of use of reverb and univibe. Since he retains and always uses his own sound guy we can assume that he and the guy on the desk are on the same page. Also he has a customised setup and has evolved and refined this over the years (even down to a hand-built valve pre-amp) so he's clearly aiming at something - which may represent, for him, the best compromise.
Players hear things. On the latest Transatlantic Sessions DVD Jerry Douglas is playing this really beautiful Weissenborn on some tracks. He had several axes at that session, including dobros and an electric lap steel, but he chose to use the Weissenborn fitted with a Sunrise pickup (which is supposed to sound very "acoustic") and then adds some overdrive to that. Presumably he had a reason for working that way rather than just using one of his electrics, or going the other way and micing up a dobro.
