I love playing my acoustic guitar. The sensation that it brings to play and feel the strings resonate off the body is something that connects me with it in a way that electric guitar doesn’t. For those of you that know what I am talking about also know the frustration of plugging in and having that character that once held us captive lost.
The truth is that no acoustic pickup has been able to bridge the gap between unplugged and plugged in. Well, last year I decided to do something about it and I came across a company called L.R. Baggs. They are based out of California and in addition to having a lot of worship guitar players on staff, they have came up with what I feel is one of best options for amplifying your acoustic guitar. So here it is: the L.R. Baggs Anthem.
The Anthem is a dual source pickup. It consists of the best of two products, the Element under-saddle pickup and a product they call TRU•MIC that is an actual mic (hence the name). They both work together to get the best acoustic ton pumped into your pa or amplifier.
I own a guitar I’ve come to love over the years. Its a 2006 Taylor 914ce. Over time she has started to sound better and better. Over time I started to notice the big difference from what she sounded like plugged in and what she naturally sounded like. I did some research and decided to do something most Taylor owners are afraid to do: remove the stock system and install the Anthem. I spoke to our bands luthier who did the operation. I strongly recommend having a professional install any aftermarket pickup in your guitar because it will likely require drilling.
After installing the Anthem, using it was very easy. The system’s controls are on a small panel that goes within the sound hole of the guitar. They designed it this way so that no large holes had to be drilled into the guitar’s body. To me it feels very natural and it does not get in the way of playing at all. It has a volume knob, a blend knob for dialing in the correct balance between the TRU•MIC and the under-saddle pickup. It also has a phase switch to fight feedback and a battery life display that indicates when the amount of batter left. The display also features some very cool “matrix style LEDs”.
The Anthem is powered by one 9v battery that can be placed in a pouch that sticks nicely inside the guitar with velcro. The life of the battery is almost eternal. I did more than 10 concerts and the battery still has half of its life.
When I put it in the full TRU•MIC position, it was not the “boxy” nasal, bottomless tone I’d come to expect from other acoustic pickup systems. The way LR Baggs solved this was by incorporating a crossover in the preamp. Much of the bottom end comes from the under-saddle pickup and most of the high end comes from the mic. The result is a fat tone that has all the natural overtones you’d normally miss in just an under-saddle pickup.
The front of house Engineer has always been impressed because it sounds like it is mic’d up studio style. The pickup is perfect when you are leading worship with a full band and need your acoustic to cut through the mix. It goes with out saying that I’m very happy with the change.
So you can get an idea of what the change was , I recorded my guitar into two RODE NT-5 (matched pair) in X/Y for a full stereo image. I also recorded the Anthem parallel so you can decide if it does a good job of amplifying the guitars real tone. Heres what they both sound like:
Taylor 914 Mic’d Up with Rode NT-5
Taylor 914 w/ LR Baggs Anthem
This is what it sounded like with the stock Taylor electronics:
And so you get an idea of what the blended setting sound like, here’s a sweep between both sources starting with the TRU•MIC and ending on the Element UTS Pickup:
I hope this helps article helps you decided if this pickup is right for you or not. Please leave your questions and comments below.
Thanks and Godspeed!!
1 Comment
I understood like 5 procent of everything lol. I wonder why you don’t upload more videos/sounds. I would love to watch some videos on youtube by you, videos like of you playing soulfire songs like generacion 12 and there tutorials.