■ Go Acoustic’ s ES Replacement System restores the warm, studioquality acoustic Taylor tone.
laminated steel chisels, where a very hard cutting edge is backed by softer, more flexible material.“ The Go Acoustic saddle uses a very hard PCB substrate for the electronics beneath a white linen Micarta string rest with slightly less durometer [ a measure of hardness ] than bone, the combination averaging out to something very close to bone in its acoustic behavior.”
So, with each string on its own circuit, a sequence of problems that had been treated as separate conditions collapsed into a single architectural challenge. They were all symptoms of combining the signal too early. By solving for this, a cascade of other issues resolved themselves.
Feedback is the clearest example. The conventional solution was mechanical, using what McGill calls mass filtration. The pickup element was physically isolated from the guitar’ s top so that vibrations from stage monitors or room noise couldn’ t couple back into the transducer. It worked, but it also prevented the string’ s energy from coupling into the top in the way it needed to for the guitar to sound like itself.
Shaw moved the solution out of the hardware and into the signal path, creating a sophisticated electronic isolation. By alternating the phase relationships between the pickups, any energy that strikes the entire top simultaneously is cancelled out before it can build into feedback.“ The first, third, and fifth strings are out of phase with the second, fourth, and sixth strings,” Shaw explains.“ Anything that hits the
“ AND THEN I REALIZED, WHY NOT JUST MAKE THIS THING A SIX-CHANNEL MIXER AND GIVE IT A FADER! YOU’ VE ALREADY GOT INDIVIDUAL INPUTS; WHY NOT GIVE IT A SIGNAL CHAIN JUST LIKE YOU WOULD IN A STUDIO MIXER?”