Hybrids. Do they work for you?

Why would anybody want that?

 

Amen!
I cannot bear the sound of blended acoustic/electric pickups.
I have tried to like it, and have decided the twain shall never meet, for me.
I had a Parker Fly at my disposal for years and I learned to carefully use only the electric sounds.
Amplified acoustic sounds are challenging to dial in.
Magnetic pickups accentuate mid-range, piezo accentuate highs and lows.
Fish and fowl.
I know some guys make it work.
I just ain't one of em'.

 

My uncle used to have a mule that was a nice-riding animal. Sure-footed like a donkey and stronger than a horse. We’d ride it bareback—it was too much work to put the saddle on.

EDIT:
I stand corrected.

Hybrid guitars...

No, not really, I don’t like them—especially a solid body with a piezo in the bridge. Those usually sound like a duck being dragged up and down a giant zipper.

The only one that has ever half-way-worked for me is my Dean Chrome G Acoustic-Electric Resonator.

The neck lipstick pickup sounds pretty good on the chrome-covered brass body...the piezo in the biscuit is kinda Meh, but gets the job done, especially when the crowd is a few pints in.

 

My avatar guitar that I posted in that thread has a stereo jack with the pickups on one side and 2 round piezo under the bridge area wired to the other side.
The result was too much treble. If I had acoustic strings on it, it might sound better. Of course that would ruin the sound of the pickups.

The only guitar I've heard with steel strings and has great electric/acoustic sound is the Taylor T5Z.

 

I've got a Dean Colt with a piezo in the bridge, and while the piezo doesn't sound like an electric guitar, it doesn't really sound like an acoustic, either. I bought it to use in a band where I had a pretty good amount of acoustic parts to play, but I could never get it to sound like a 'real' acoustic and ended up dragging my Martin to gigs anyway.

- D

 

Exactly! What about the guitar players' philosophy?
Q. How many guitars do you need?
A. One more.

My brother once had a Gibson J-160e. Looked like a J-45 with a pickup near the end of the neck.

Sounded like an electric. Not exactly sure what it did for the Beatles when they played them onstage in the early days.

 

When I made my Strat-O-Rez: The piezo is on the bottom side of the aluminum skillet right under the bridge block area and offers more of a woody tone than steel string tone. Which is something to consider when building one/buying one of the electric/acoustic type guitars.
Rod piezo's with a preamp sound so much better because the preamp has an EQ and the rod piezo isn't as sensitive as the round single types.

 

To answer the header question - no. I build acoustic guitars and I spend way too much time trying to make the best sounding acoustic guitar I can. I have had several of the hybrids (the second gen Acousticsonic, the Gibson Chet nylon, a Roland synth guitar, one that I put together for my son) - simply put none of them sounded as good as a true acoustic guitar. I can see the appeal for certain gigging musicians, but not for me.

 

When it comes to my typical gig, I bring a Tele. The main objective is to occupy a different tonal array than the bassist and other (acoustic) guitar player. The middle switch position with volume and tone knobs dialed in gives me a similar response to an acoustic. With this, I can blend well with the other one to the point that only other guitar players might be able to tell them apart while listening.
I don’t need to bring another guitar along.
In my admittedly small world, the hybrid is the solution lookin for the problem.
Maybe their great for GB guys, or the beat box looper solo act.
T5s are really cool, but the necks don’t work for me at all.
I am doomed to play the Tele.
But, it has a B bender anyway.

 

After owning and using a Deluxe Nashville power Tele that comes with a Fishman piezo bridge installed at the factory, I modded almost all of my electrics to include a piezo bridge. The way they are set up, I can use a Y cable with a TRS jack at the single end to split the piezo sound out from the magnetic pickup signal, running the "acoustic" signal into the PA or an acoustic amp, and the magnetics into my regular amp. The result is pretty damn good, very dynamic and getting the best sounds out of each pickup system. Using the piezo this way produces a useable acoustic sound on demand, and the magnetic pickups are available as well.
Going the other route, blending the signals, gives me the girth/fullness of the minihums I prefer with the sheen of the piezos. Usually, I set the magnetic levels and tone to desired sound, then dial in the piezo signal to taste. Like any good condiment in cooking, a little bit goes a long way, but it, IMHO, makes things sound sooo good. Since I play a solo act and almost all clean, the piezo sounds with the magnetics serve "my sound" well. YMMV

 

This is my T5X, it's an older one so the body is larger than the current ones. About the size of a 335 but much lighter. Does it sound like an acoustic? No, but it does sound sweet unplugged. Plugged in there are a multitude of options with the active controls and the 5 position switch. Strings of choice are the recommended Elixir electrics. If I could only keep one guitar, this would be it.

 

The two sounds are so different, I've yet to hear a mechanical simulation of one, with the other. Even with all the advancements in modelling and IR, I've yet to hear a solid body that could come even close to flattop. I might could say I've almost heard a flattop sound like a [mediocre] solid body with an emag pickup, and plenty of intentional feedback. That's not to say that hybrids don't sound good, because they do. But I don't think we are anywhere close to producing a dreadnaught and a humbucker sound out of one guitar.

 

There are a couple of guys at the DIY subforum who have built hybrids, one currently in progress. I keep asking what they are trying to achieve, I'm not sure they know

 

Probably not a hybrid per se, but I put a piezo bridge on my Gretsch 5120. For the longest time I wasn't thrilled with it, but I recently invested in a proper acoustic amp and that really brought out the sound.
It's pretty remarkable how much of our "guitar" tone really comes from the amp. Using the acoustic amp with the piezo doesn't make it sound like a D-28 but it does get me a lot closer, close enough that I wouldn't worry about taking a separate acoustic to most gigs. If I do combine channels and run it into the same amp, it adds a nice fatness to the bottom of those glassy 'Trons that's good for a lot of things.
I'm planning out a build that I want to use mainly for slide and I'll be putting a Graphtec Ghost system on it. I like the sound of slide on an acoustic and I think that might be a great way of adding the string "grind" of slide of an acoustic to the P-90 I'm pondering for it.

 

Well, yes - they get you in the ballpark of tone without your needing a roadie to go back and forth between the two. But no - they don’t sound as good. But acoustic guitars generally don’t amplify well anyhow, so I dunno - maybe? But one of the worst tones I’ve ever dad was a piezo bridge in a strat, so, no?

I will soon put a pickup in my resonator, so that will be another trade off. It’s always a compromise.

 

I dunno. I bought a Lawrence sound hole pickup for my acoustic in the ‘70s. In ‘84, I bought a Takamine E/A. Was I trying to have an electric and an acoustic in one guitar? No, I just didn’t want to be bothered with trying to rig a mic setup for my acoustic when I needed to be louder. I have a monkey-on-a-stick for my archtop, but there I’m just trying to sound like an archtop with a monkey-on-a-stick. I’m not sure I’ve ever even tried to have it both ways. Oh, and I have never for a minute thought of my Danelectro Convertible as a “hybrid” even though that’s how it was marketed back when. It’s just a weird, plunky-sounding electric.

 

I almost always bring an acoustic to "electric" gigs, I have always found the hybrids to fail when it comes to sound. I can actually get a more realistic sound from my Tele with an emulator if needed.

 

No. You need at least two guitars.One electric, preferably a Fender and one acoustic, preferably a Martin.

 

Did you have a preamp in that one? Any kind of buffer? I found that i needed a preamp with a high input impedance in mine. I used a piezo disc under the bridge of an aluminum topped Ibanez. It sounds rather faux resonator like.