How To Get A Huge Acoustic Guitar Sound - Pickup Hack/Trick 

I have links to all the gear mentioned in this video in the description above. If you have any questions just let me know. I'm happy to help 👍

Thanks for sharing this tip. Great idea!

Thanks for the video! Would be great to hear more of your playing with this set up!

put a cord that goes to nothing in your bypass Jack and you should be able to use the pedal as a mute. That’s what I saw Mike Dawes doing.

Absolutely wonderful!

Great little video, thanks!

Proper 'BOSS' tuition literally 👌👍

Great stuff boss.

Love this video!! Might do this myself. Hope to see you in Milwaukee in August :)

Class. Thanks a million. :)

That's impressive!!! I love how the sound hole pickup is hidden underneath your playing hand.

Nice one brother

I've been blending a piezo and a cheap in-hole but never thought about switching to vertical... LIKE!...

Hi- I've been running the 'new' LR Baggs Align Session and EQ pedals after the TU2: (Just dropped in the OC3 with similar settings to yours )and then Align series Delay and a BOSS RV6 to the amp: I wish I'd tried the OC3 before! Fabulous!

Nice hack. I use the SubNUp for my bass sound. I have two and add a little octave up for the top strings sometimes.

Hey Aidan, we both have the same last name! And we're both musicians. Small world. My Irish relatives are from County Mayo. Yours? Rock on!

Great video & thanks for sharing. I've been using the boss oc5 for a few months with a Taylor 214ce. I've never been happy with the range or lowest function as the oc5 seems to favour the low A over the Low E & sounds off when strumming chords. Ive just ordered a neo d & I'm hoping I'll achieve the results you've got. Great video & really nice playing

Hey Aodan! Amazing tutorial! Can you explain what the 3rd guitar input is for? the one you mention at 1:28. Greatly appreciate this video!

Another idea I thought about while watching your video is using a multi-fx unit that is capable of internally splitting your guitar input into two parallel signal chains that you can process differently. One would be your main guitar sound, and the other one your can use for the bass sound: cut off the treble, add octave and compression

For a DI Box I use an Ultrasound DI Plus. Same circuitry as their amps. IT's a Pre Dean Markley version. Simple, clean tone. No tone coloring.

Thank you for this. I can’t believe installing the Fishman that way has never occurred to me. I’ve always wanted to isolate my two bass strings. I always figured I’d eventually get someone to make me a kind of “two-in-one” pickup. One that would have two separate pickups in one housing - two separate outputs as well, of course. One with two poles (bass) and one with 4 poles (the rest). I currently just run a single line out into a crossover filter that will let me send bass and treble out as two separate channels. It’s not perfect separation but it works pretty good. I’ve also used the Fishman midi pickup. The software lets you assign sounds to separate strings. Not a fan of the latency issues that come with midi processing. I’m a fingerpicker so it all gets to be a little too much for the processor to keep up with. I have one of those Fishman humbuckers. Gotta try that setup.

Very cool! Do you have any performance videos using this technique? Id love to hear it in a full song context.

Grab a 1/8 to 1/4 headphone adapter and plug that into the dry output, and that will trick the pedal into thinking there's another output happening.

It is really helpful. I've been wondering what gauge and make of string you prefer. Or is it it just anything that's on hand. I finger mediums give a great deep dark tone that works for me. Just wondering

Great video, thanks! Quick question : when the Boss pedal is ON and the mute pedal is OFF, I believe the vertical pickup still picks some sound from the 4 higher strings that we don't wanna hear right? Is the leakage minimal and not a problem? Sorry for my English, hope it's clear :)

The EH B9 pedal has a setting for split bass that simplifies things a bit. No special pickup needed and you can just turn it on or off for this effect. Has two outputs so that keeps both bass and regular guitar signals split. I tried a compressor and EQ after the bass output for more tweakability and that wasn't too bad. I still feel like this octave pedal bass sound is too robotic for my ears, so I use sparingly in acoustic performances. So much fun so worth it though.

That is incredible, thanks for the video. What Taylor is that? It looks like a much nicer version of the Mahogany Taylor GS mini I owned. It is beautiful👌🔥

You can eliminate all of this by getting a BASS9 pedal. It turns your 5 and 6 strings into bass strings and you can split the signal. Total game changer for me.

I'm gonna try something like this with my HX stomp, you can run stereo inputs into it and run simultaneous signal paths with eq, compresstion and other fancy effects. I'll report back if I get good results.

😉 perfekt, dakujem

Well Aodan! I'm playing a bit of trad in an Irish pub on a cruise ship atm and just wondering which set up works the best? The new submarine pro pickup or Fishman?

Thanks very much Aodan, especially for getting back to me so quickly, I just went to my Gmail and should have the humbucker pickup and the behringer octave in tomorrow mornings post, I also see you play the Millwaukee Irish festival, I also played there many years ago with at the time Johnny Reidy band and the Listowel irish dancers under Mary Cantilon, it's a memory I'll never forget that's for sure, anyway that's for the advice, I will be sure to get back to you how it goes, I was half tempted to also buy the submarine last night but I see these don't sell on Amazon, but I've got a good starting point I think, I could not find the mute switch you mention, but I do happen to have the tuner you spoke about, but how do i run the chain with this, thanks again Regards, Martin williams

I use the Ssoulmate T-Rex, curious what you think of ot. Greet Tom

Pretty cool! If you don’t mind me asking, what part of the world are you from. I’m originally from Newfoundland, Canada. Our dialect and voice accent are very similar where I’m from. It’s uncanny actually haha. Great video, I’m trying to get my acoustic sounds worked out for an upcoming gig. I’ve been a electric guitar player for 36 years… now finally digging into the acoustic world. ✌️

I’ve been looking into doing this “conversion” so to speak but have yet to find an octave pedal that sounds clean enough. I usually find them to not properly track the played notes (probably picking up to much harmonics or something to that effect) and I find it gets kinda fuzzy sounding. As to DI-boxes I’m a bit picky 😛 I’ve been using Radial Stage Bug SB-1. They’re tiny so I’ve manage to fit 3 on my board and it’s pretty much a J48 which I think is one of the best DI’s there is.

Hi @aodancoynemusic, thank you so much for the great insights and suggestions. I have a question though I own a Baby Taylor BT1e and my problem is even after watching a number of videos I am still trying to design a pedal board for myself as whenever plugged in ithas a very thin sound because of the 3/4th size and as directly plugged in PA it makes it worse any suggestions what pedals to use and how best I can improve the sound. Thanks

Have you checked out the rare earth blend? Curious if it would work to turn it sideways in the sound hole then use the mic to pick up the highend and the blend fuction to dial in the sound you’re after?

Hey man instead of going through all that trouble all you need to do is put the octave pedal in to poly mode. That’s it. Put the direct level all the way up and adjust the octave knob to how much or how little bass you want. That’s what I do and works like a charm getting your lower notes bassy without having all this drilling and extra pedals.

Hi Aodan, am I delighted I found your RU-vid Channel, I hope you can give me some advice, first off soon as I heard you speak, I said to myself, you sound like your from kerry, but lol not too far out your from Patrick roach country, we have been on TV together many years ago live @3 search for a star 1990, but since then I started a wedding band and now years later I'm a oneman band playing to backing tracks, and just last Friday while playing in Abbeyfeale, with my 9 series RCF's and B1500xp sub 's and my Takamine EN10, using it mainly because of Patrick's day and left my electric guitars sitting on the stand, I had my acoustic through the Nux Stage floorman, but playing away when playing over the bass strings I could feel boom, well that's kinda overkill, but this nice bass sound, of course yes I had my Subs on stage but this got me thinking, wondering if I could deepen down the low E A D strings a bit more and still have the other strings crisp, So I said I will buy the Boss Octave pedal then a friend of mine said its a lot of money to be splashing out and maybe then not happy in the end, So I was told get the clone from behringer, try this first at only a few euro and has good reviews, of course still not sold on just buying the pedal I had to do some extra browsing and, the title of your video brought me to you, then at the start here you said this is how my guitar sounds now, without the pickup turned on, then you Litteraly got my full attention when you played with the bass pickup on, I said that's! the sound I'm after, can you give me some advice here please, I play country, folk, ballads, all genres really, I have the behringer octave in transit, am I wasting my time with this pedal, or should I change guitar, or just go with exactly what you mentioned here and also the kill switch bringing the acoustic back to normal when I want, I'm anxious to get this plan of mine rolling as soon as possible, thanks so much for the video,

Nice video. By the way it’s a JHS mute switch, not VHS.

Hi Aodan, I played a gig last night first night with the Neo D pickup, plugged it straight into my desk, and for me to get any sound out of if at all I had to turn the gain up all the way? I was going to use the beringer UO300 pedal but I did not like the sound, yes I know it's cheap but I just wanted to see how this would fair out before I bought the boss, So last night I had my guitar just plugged into my NU-X floor stageman and I just left the Neo D plugged in also, but as I said it's channel was up full, do I have to get the Boss pedal to drive it? having to turn the desk gain up full, this can't be right 🤔👍

Very interesting wish to get a personal coaching

Awesome video. I’m just not sure why you need a mute switch?

Great! I allready use an Octavizer. Never thought to do it this way. (For foreigners don't speak so fast, to play it slower changes you nice playing(;-)

Bodyrez pedal can help when you've got an acoustic with those cheap piezo pickups... (by no means great, but better...)

Hi, and many thanks; would this be useful for standard tunng too, please?

Hi aodan why is it you need the mute switch for the octave pedal??? Just after ordering a mcilroy a30c! Have you tried the new boss oc5 I don’t think you would need a separate pickup for this . Trying to decide myself what pickups to get I was thinking of the fishman rare earth and K&K pure mini

David Howley from We Banjo 3 does this

I’m using the TC electronic Sub n’ Up along with the JHS mute switch and Mooer yellow compressor pedal. Fishman Neo D (although finding it harder to find these with a female jack , plenty online with male jacks). I almost prefer this passive pickup to the active version tbh. I have both and although you need to add more gain to the passive version I think it sounds a bit nicer and plus it is much less expensive than the rare earth. I highly recommend the sub n’ up, tracking is perfect. I used to have the OC3 but haven’t looked back since getting the TC pedal

Does it work with classical Pop Chords like G C Em D (could you hear the bass on this string?) Because i have a problem with the OC-5 while playing some Chords (for example: When playing a G-Chord you can also hear higher Notes which are octivated) Thanks!

Hi Aodan. I'm using an L R Baggs M1 on a Taylor Big Baby. It's fitted conventionally ie vertically and it's clear as a bell, but I'm struggling to stop the B string ringing and when fingerpicking I have to be mindful of that and adjust my playing. Tries lowering the poles on the B and high E and offsetting the pickup a little, also turning down the high frequencies when recording or playing live through a Zoom Four X pedal. Frustrating to keep getting that ring on the B string in particular. Would be grateful for any recommendations. Cheers.

Is it the humbucker version you use of the rare earth aodan

How about the boss oc5? Have you tried before?

Great sound. Could u also share the diagram? Pretty cool. Cheers.

Anyone know what settings on Boss OC-5 to get same sound as you have with the OC-3

What kind of taylor are you using in this

Where I can watch the video that you used in 00:17

SUBMARINE PICKUP!!!

Quilter for my di box. Cab Sim off for my acoustic...

It sounds like you have a bass player with you

Could have used more sampke sounds

Sounds the same 😂