Baggs Anthem...Overdriving?

[PaperMoon]

I've got a bit of a conundrum on my hands and I'd be grateful for any advice! A few months ago I got a Guild M20 with a Baggs Anthem installed (full, not the SL). Love the guitar, kind of on the fence about the pickup, read ahead. I've mostly been using a Felix for a preamp and the gain is right around 2:00 (I know that the full Anthem needs a little more juice than, say, a K&K, but 2:00 doesn't seem to be too excessive). I've got a compressor (WA Mira), a Dispatch Master (delay/reverb), and a Ditto x2 in the effects loop. I've got the compressor set gently for warmth and tone-shaping: a lower threshold and ratio (2:1-ish), with output and makeup gain just slightly above noon (roughly the same volume on or off)--again, nothing excessive. The Felix is mostly set flat, notching out a resonant frequency about an octave below middle C.

Anyway, at home everything above is well behaved, and at solo gigs things have been mostly well behaved, but on a couple of occasions now the guitar signal has been overdriving, for lack of a better term. It has mostly happened in plug-and-play scenarios on a stage involving a sound tech and PA etc. I wouldn't say that I was bashing the guitar, but I definitely had to play more vigorously to get enough volume out of the above. (I have a super light touch and it's kind of a curse). The first time I noticed it I suspected it was the battery, so I changed it, but it happened again today during a show. I'm a fingerstyle / strum-with-nails guy, so it's pretty mortifying to have this growly, Chuck Berry thing going on (it's sort of like a soft clipping sound; not necessarily unpleasant, but entirely not intended).

A couple other issues with the Anthem in this guitar that I'm having:
(1) Faint high E string, regardless of where the blend is set. This really complicates playing lead lines. I took it to a tech and he said he couldn't figure it out. Should I have another tech try to un/re-install it?
(2) Noise. A little bit of noise coming through the Felix with gain as above and no pedals. I can mostly get around this with a slight cut around 6.4kHz, wider Q.
(3) Pretty strong resonances. I've got phosphor bronze strings on it currently, and I'm in D-standard tuning. When I play a D note, 5th fret B string, and a G note, 5th fret E string, the overtones are huge. It didn't do this with the previous set of strings I used (I tried Thomastik-Infelds for fun). Maybe PBs just don't play nicely with this guitar?

Has anyone experienced anything like these issues? Is it the unholy marriage of a lil' mahogany concert-body guitar with a fairly-weak-albeit-very-natural pickup?
Should I tear out the Anthem and finally cave in to getting a Dazzo (i.e. finding someone in my area who can install one)?
Am I doomed to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity due to my transgressions? Is there not one among us who hath borne a similar burden?

I'm getting carried away; any thoughts are greatly appreciated! I'm moderately embarrassed to be having these issues and to be sharing them.

[Joe.Manganese]

My full anthem has a battery, and although the level is a bit weaker than my fishman I don't dare to preamp it, 6 db gain is all I can set eventually. Beyond that it is overdriven for sure. A K&K is passive, an Anthem is active. You are preamping an already amped signal.

[keith.rogers]

The Anthem installation is pretty clear that the treble end of the transducer needs to be somewhat past the E string, and suggests a gently rounded slope of a small hole at that end of the saddle to insert that part of the transducer into, i.e., to be sure you don't have that bit of unresponsive end under the 1st string (or treble end of saddle) that needs to be picked up.

You might not need the drilled/rounded hole if the saddle is long enough (and the UST goes the entire length of the slot), but I did that on my install, and don't have any problem with the 1st string. Not gonna lift the saddle and measure, but you can see my saddle ends about 5mm past the E string, and I still have a bit of UST going past that, into the hole I drilled and beveled for it.

p.s. (edit) I haven't noticed any unusual resonances or issues in overdriving the sound, but I've only used an extra preamp once or twice at an open mic, and not playing in a loud band so haven't been in a situation where I need to play aggressively, though I do wield a pretty heavy flatpick on medium strings in bluegrass jams, and there's nothing going on acoustically in my guitar. USTs are pretty sensitive about having a near perfect fit between the bottom of the slot and base of the saddle, and the mic bit of blend can certainly respond with near feedback in the Anthem design. Maybe spend some time along with the guitar and an PA/amp (local GC?), and isolate (in/out) your FX to see what's going on. I'd think the Felix would let you get the gain staging and EQ set so you would have zero problems with overdriving things. (You're using the FX loop, right?)

p.p.s. The fundamental of the E string is above the crossover to the mic part of the blend, so somewhat surprising you're not picking up more E string when you turn up the mic part of the blend. Do you hear a noticeable change in the overall tone when you roll the blend back and forth?

[PaperMoon]

Originally Posted by Joe.Manganese

My full anthem has a battery, and although the level is a bit weaker than my fishman I don't dare to preamp it, 6 db gain is all I can set eventually. Beyond that it is overdriven for sure. A K&K is passive, an Anthem is active. You are preamping an already amped signal.

I had thought about that, but the rub is that I need to be able to EQ and shape the tone, and I can't do that without preamp gain. I had figured that reasonable gain levels would be okay, but I think you're right.

Originally Posted by keith.rogers

The Anthem installation is pretty clear that the treble end of the transducer needs to be somewhat past the E string, and suggests a gently rounded slope of a small hole at that end of the saddle to insert that part of the transducer into, i.e., to be sure you don't have that bit of unresponsive end under the 1st string (or treble end of saddle) that needs to be picked up.

You might not need the drilled/rounded hole if the saddle is long enough (and the UST goes the entire length of the slot), but I did that on my install, and don't have any problem with the 1st string. Not gonna lift the saddle and measure, but you can see my saddle ends about 5mm past the E string, and I still have a bit of UST going past that, into the hole I drilled and beveled for it.

p.s. (edit) I haven't noticed any unusual resonances or issues in overdriving the sound, but I've only used an extra preamp once or twice at an open mic, and not playing in a loud band so haven't been in a situation where I need to play aggressively, though I do wield a pretty heavy flatpick on medium strings in bluegrass jams, and there's nothing going on acoustically in my guitar. USTs are pretty sensitive about having a near perfect fit between the bottom of the slot and base of the saddle, and the mic bit of blend can certainly respond with near feedback in the Anthem design. Maybe spend some time along with the guitar and an PA/amp (local GC?), and isolate (in/out) your FX to see what's going on. I'd think the Felix would let you get the gain staging and EQ set so you would have zero problems with overdriving things. (You're using the FX loop, right?)

p.p.s. The fundamental of the E string is above the crossover to the mic part of the blend, so somewhat surprising you're not picking up more E string when you turn up the mic part of the blend. Do you hear a noticeable change in the overall tone when you roll the blend back and forth?

Thank you much for this. I'm going to have a friend of mine who works on his guitars investigate the inside; fortunately the saddle on mine also extends past the high E string, so it may just need to be adjusted underneath.

To your second point--yep, I've spent a lot of time putting it through its paces and I've gigged with it pretty frequently. I'm using the effects loop and running the Felix into my mixer (A&H Zed10), checking the PFL. Everything is within reasonable limits. I suspect that, being a small body guitar, it might just be a situation analogous to running a Fender Champ, where it just eventually starts to cave in on itself.

Yes, it's very surprising for exactly that reason! There is a tonal shift for sure. I initially adjusted the mic trim to be as robust as I could make it (turning that little screw all the way toward the neck, if I recall correctly); anyway, the piezo quack sets in pretty early as I roll toward the pickup; I try to retain as much mic as I can, and only roll in some of the pickup for more percussive songs.

I will say, this system is remarkably feedback resistant compared to my K&K-equipped Taylor, which will feed back if you look at it.

[keith.rogers]

Originally Posted by PaperMoon

...
Yes, it's very surprising for exactly that reason! There is a tonal shift for sure. I initially adjusted the mic trim to be as robust as I could make it (turning that little screw all the way toward the neck, if I recall correctly); anyway, the piezo quack sets in pretty early as I roll toward the pickup; I try to retain as much mic as I can, and only roll in some of the pickup for more percussive songs.

I am pretty sure mine [mic gain] is not more than half. I don't think you're ever going to shut off the piezo with that blend dial - it's more about how much mic you can add, and maybe that gain is a wee bit high.

My guitar is a an OM body/scale so not quite as small from the pic you posted.

[PaperMoon]

An update for those who could draw from these misadventures in the future:

I spoke with the Baggs customer service folks and

(1) The hissing noise is from the mic trim being set too high. When setting it the other way, the hiss disappears, but the handling noise and general trebly business increases dramatically, meaning that much less of the mic blend is required.

(2) The overdriving / soft clipping is apparently from the wires and/or preamp inside not being secure; the mic and pickup are amplifying that when it happens with hard strumming etc.

(3) The resonances and so on are just part of the general cosmic curse that I seem to possess when it comes to selecting acoustic guitars for amplification.

Now here's the bummer--when adjusting the mic trim plastic screw thing, I accidentally gave it a good push and it disappeared into the preamp, so the potentiometer is now firmly stuck on one speed. Baggs customer support told me that to fix this, I'd have to send it in for repair.

So this is all a bummer. The full Anthem is great but I've had a run of bad luck with it from the install to operator error (wanting to bend it to my own preferences instead of rolling with it).

Although the cost is higher, I'm thinking about waiting for the Hifi Duet to come out and see if that would be a worthy upgrade (I definitely prefer the tone and feel of an SBT to an undersaddle pickup; and I assume the onboard preamp would be hotter, which is of particular interest to me).

Part of me also likes the idea of going the Dazzo route, but (a) I'm not competent enough to do my own installations and (b) I'm not sure if anyone in my area would take it on.

So it goes!