Passive pick-up Dobro

[Planetben]

Is it possible to make a voice print with a Dobro which only has a passive pickup? If so can you offer instructions.

[Caleb_Elling]

Hey PlanetBen,
I've heard from a few people who have made great-sounding Voiceprints with Dobros. The passive pickup shouldn't be an issue either.

From what I've heard from the people who have done it, you just have to play with the mic placement a little bit to find the "sweet spot" for that specific instrument. I would try placing the phone mic in a similar way to how you would mic the Dobro for a studio recording.

If you try it out, let us know how it goes.

[Phantom Engineer]

I have used the Voiceprint with the Fishman Nashville pickup that is installed in my squareneck resonator. It's a great pickup, but I wanted a more acoustic sound. The Fishman Jerry Douglas Aura pedal supposedly helps "acousticize" the pickup sound, and everybody uses that, but I wanted to take a risk on the new technology offered by the LR Baggs Voiceprint DI pedal. I couldn't find any examples online of anybody trying the Voiceprint DI with a dobro, but I wanted to give it a try. I finally got the pedal a couple days ago, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.

I recorded a video that includes a bunch of sound demos of the voiceprints I've generated so far to compare each of the voiceprints to each other, and to the sound of the pickup alone with the Voiceprint pedal bypassed. The video is at [URL]https://youtu.be/PAf-Zths1Cw.[/URL] The comparisons start at about 11 minutes 45 seconds into the video. (Until then I do a lot of talking and unfortunately the talking sound level is pretty low. Hey, I'm not a video pro!)

I hope that the video is enlightening and useful to other reso players considering this pedal. I'd love a chance to do a side-by-side comparison with the JD Aura if anybody in the Philadelphia PA area with a JD Aura wants to get together and test it out.

[Caleb_Elling]

Thanks so much for sharing your findings, and for getting it on video!

I had heard from some other customers that the VPDI was working really well with the Dobro, but I hadn't heard any samples until today. I agree that it's a solid improvement over the original sound. I think a little EQ in the right places would make it a pretty unbeatable sound!