He had in his possession a TrueTapper Eclipse, and his Stick, and so me made identical recordings — minimal effects, same settings — and as a further comparison he also recorded the same song on a cheap Strat-knockoff.

It’s a truism that in sound recording, your effects and amplifier chain may have a greateer effect upon your sound than the particular instrument you are using!

And so it is that in recordings, or videos you see on YouTube, it can be difficult to evaluate the ‘natural’, unprocessed sound. If the musician is really skillful with his amp and effects chain, he may create what kind of sounds like a natural sound, but really it may be highly processed.

Hearing the same song, by the same player, with the same settings, using minimal effects, allows you to compare. (Naturally, when you yourself are performing, you may wish to use your effects and amp to maximum benefit, just as other musicians do!)

If your ears are keen, you can also hear, on these unprocessed recordings, the subtle effect of the Buzz Feiten Intonation System, making the Megatar sound slightly more ‘in tune’ as the song is played.

So the benefit of this particular set of recordings is that they are, to the best of our knowledge, the only time that a one-for-one recording has been made. (Mr. Goos who made these recordings was not requested to make them, nor was he compensated in any way for the recordings. He was just interested in this very same question, and kindly allowed us to have copies, so you could hear them too.)

These three recordings allow you to compare the sound of the instruments for yourself.

Let your ears be the judge …

http://megatarcomparison.com/mobius-megatar-chapman-stick-songs/

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(1) First, it is a fact that little tiny strings wiggling in a magnetic field create a smaller signal than great big ‘ol strings wiggling in a magnetic field. The mass of tiny strings is smaller and so it disrupts/alters the magnetic field less. Also the swinging of a big string is somewhat larger than a smaller string, I think, so its wiggling is both further and more mass.

(2) So the first line of approach on the instrument is to see if you can get the magnetic field to be closer to the small string, because as the magnetic field grows closer, within certain boundaries, the magnetic field reacts to the wiggling string more.

The general way you do this is either to (a) raise pole pieces under tiny strings, if you have pickups like the gold-case pickups on the Dragon instruments, or if you have pickups like on the Chapman Stick, or (b) if you have rail or solid pickups then you adjust the mount screws so that the end of the pickup under the small strings is closer to the string.

How close?

One good way to do it is to bring the pickup high until the string strikes it when playing at fret 25. Then back it off. Now when the string is very close, the magnets will pull on the string, and it will have a slight distorted sound. (Depending on your rig, this may be subtle.) Back the pickup away until the distorted sound just diminishes.

The other way to approach this is to move the other end of the pickup away from the fatter strings. Because it’s the difference in closeness that makes for a difference in volume output from the thinner and fatter strings.

In the Mobius factory shop when prepping instruments to go out, we test the relative loudness of bass strings at fret 3-4, and the relative loudness of melody strings at fret 13-14, as a good general overall test.

(3) The other part of the equation is — what are you playing the instrument into? If you run it into a bass amp, the nature of a bass amp is to be very kind to bass strings, but it will absolutely eat up your highs, and tiny strings have very little sound t offer other than highs, so their volume is naturally diminished.

Likewise the tone control, if your instrument has one, if it’s rolled off will kill more sound on your highest strings. The Chapman Stick instruments don’t normally have tone controls, but Warr Guitar and Megatar instruments do, of course, because it gives you more control over your sound during the gig.

In a similar fashion, on any amp, your EQ settings create a large difference in what frequencies come out. In our factory shop when we set up instruments, we use an unusually flat-response P.A. type amp (Barbetta) with no boosts nor cuts in the EQ. We don’t want to hear the sound sweetened or colored in any way when we’re setting it up. But of course, for your music, you will choose the amp and effects which best present the music you are creating.

And also, some effects (even when not labled EQ) change EQ in order to accomplish their effect. Phasers and chorusers can cause phase cancellation, and some distortion effects boost mids (at the expense of highs).

Try carrying your instrument into Guitar Center and try other amps. They will all present different sounds, including a difference in the relative volume between high strings and low strings.

One favorite sound, for many of us, is a ‘jazz guitar.’ But it’s also a fact that this distinctive sound is created by rolling off highs, and so to compensate, your fingers have to be lighter on big strings, and heavier on little strings.

(4) The action of strings does absolutely have an effect on relative loudness. If you have a relatively low action, and you have the gain up, usually a good balance is available.

Sometimes overlooked is that, if you have a high action, then you have to hit all strings hard, and this gives you very little control over dynamics. So how could you create, with your fingers, more volume from the high strings? You can’t.

With a nice low action, and the gain turned up a little higher than seems reasonable, then you can play lightly, and your fingers will have far more control over how loud the strings sound.

Although tiny strings absolutely make less sound than fat strings, and that continues to be true for any guitar or bass, all these other things will affect the volume that you hear.

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TWO AMPS

Because the instrument has bass and melody outputs, some people simply use a bass amp for the bass sound and a guitar amp for the melody sound. If you were gigging, this can be a lot of stuff to haul, but at home it’s not all that difficult.

Of course two amps cost more than one amp, but it is a fact that bass amps are built so as to be very *kind* to the sound from bass strings, and guitar amps are built so as to be very *kind* to the sound from guitar strings. So this two-amp plan does work pretty well for getting a great sound.

ONE AMP

Tapper Teed Rockwell, for one, uses a Fender Twin Reverb. He plugs both the bass and the melody leads into the single amp. His reasoning is that the instrument is *one* instrument, and so he wants to have *one* amp. Now Teed is also a guy who uses very little in the way of effects.

He says his fingers are his effects. And he gets a great sound from the single amp.

If you’re selecting a single amp, the thing to beware of is this — Some bass amps will produce rather a muffled sound for the guitar strings, and some guitar amps will produce rather a weak bass sound. However, other bass amps and guitar amps can produce excellent results.

Your ears must be your teacher. And most any guitar store will let you try amps, as much as you like. (Just don’t play ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ OK?)

ONE KEYBOARD-TYPE AMP WITH EFFECTS

Some use this particular method, because it allows them to have a rather light-weight amp which can handle very low and very high sounds. Keyboard amps or PA-type amps are made to handle both very low and very high sounds.

Now, bear in mind that keyboard or PA amps are *not* designed to be *kind* to the sound of bass or guitar like bass and guitar amps are made to do, and also anybody playing loud rock and roll should be aware that over-driving a keyboard amp doesn’t get a great sound but can damage the amp instead, because they’re built differently from guitar and bass amps.

Also, most everybody who uses a PA-amp uses *something* to condition the bass and melody sound before it goes into the keyboard amp. Some folks use two direct boxes, and sometimes these direct boxes have amp modelling built in, so it sounds like your melody is a guitar amp and your bass is a bass amp.

Other folks use guitar stomp boxes on the floor. Other folks (including me) have experimented with floor-type keyboard effects which can then produce a wide range of lush and exotic sounds.

We’ve also had good results with amp-emulating and effects units like the Johnson J-Station or the Line Six units. And I’ve also had totally great results with the Guitar Rig software from Native Instruments. It runs on your computer, and lets you choose amps and effects, and has great sound. (The videos I’ll mention below were done using the Guitar Rig software, but with very minimal effects, as I wanted a very clean and bare sound.)

We cannot really recommend a particular amp or effects chain. For one thing, they change every year, and so who can be up to date? But, more importantly, your own ears will tell you the answers fast, and we could never guess those answers, just because we’re all different guys and different musicians. I (Traktor) play ‘elevator music’, and I like jazz harmonies and ‘beautiful music’ mixes, used in standard, Beatles tunes, and bossa novas. Your music will be different, and even if you played the same songs, you’d treat them differently, and you’d best enjoy some different
sound.

However, though we don’t know the answer, we know where the answer can easily be found — Go to any music store, and plug in and try the things. Your ears and your budget will tell you the answer quickly.

Also, remember that you can *start* with almost anything, because your earliest practice will be getting the feel of it. Luckily, your past training will transfer quickly, and the process is a lot of fun. And after a couple of weeks playing through *anything*, you’ll probably be in a better position to specify what you’d prefer more exactly.

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