Trans Blue '97 Classic

[mmmguitar]

To elaborate upon what I disclaimed in my listing: I spent a while hunting gremlins in the course of trying to determine why the Acousti-Phonic preamp was introducing a mild ground hum into the signal path (fortunately, it's not present when grounding the guitar by actually playing or otherwise touching the strings or hardware; resulting in it still being quite usable for recording). I isolated every grounding wire and component of the guitar in trying to pin down what the issue is (having first assumed I was hearing a ground loop); and it seems to come down to the preamp itself: There is zero symptom of this noise/hum whenever the Acousti-Phonic board is out of the signal path. Were the piezo element ground wires themselves the culprit, the noise wouldn't be altogether absent in the Hexpander preamp signal path. Disconnecting every Acousti-Phonic-specific connection (QuickSwitch, volume pot, mag signal/ground input) does not alleviate it. I even ran the Acousti-Phonic on 13 pin power, with the 9 volt battery disconnected.

In researching this issue online, I found that Alex Lifeson Axcess owners also shared this specific complaint.

So my verdict is that, while I can live with quirks such as the Graph Tech saddles having greater crosstalk than Richard McCLish's Fly saddle design, and the Hexpander preamp having a higher noise floor than the RMC PolyDrive 1 - and will continue to use both in other guitars - I think I'll be going exclusively RMC in any future Fly projects.

For what it's worth, I feel the Acousti-Phonic in the Classic sounds superior to the PolyDrive piezo preamp in my Belew (and hope to make time to record comparisons) - But the high noise floor of the preamp makes me glad I put in that bypass switch.

[mmmguitar]

Being as none of my guitars are set up for approximating acoustic stuff, here's a quick demo of some lower fret string buzz comparing the piezo sounds of the RMC PolyDrive, Graph Tech Acousti-Phonic, Variax 1.0 model of a '59 Martin D-28 and, finally, the Roland GR-55's modeled D-28 (which seems to emphasize buzz and extraneous string noise most of all).

Whats New.mp3

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I’ve also detailed the sale in the What is This Worth? thread.