I have taken some pains to gather together components for amplifying the classical guitar. This has been over a 20 year search that continues

My immediate need was to be heard, not in concert or in small ensemble but above the din of wine glasses and talk at a casual.

In the recent past I have used a Soloette, microphone and a small amplifier. Suffice to say that it is not the ideal setup for the situation it is just convenient. You are playing "Feelings" and paid $100 for three hours. So in this sense it is ideal to carry all of your gear in one trip. It is not important to make a classical guitar sound. They haven't paid for it.

In general, I'd only amplify for quick money and would use the smallest combo amp I could get by with. Since it mostly involved performing that really isn't performance, improvising the cheapest of jazz for partygoers who really didn't listen, what difference did it make? One casual per car payment.

In the early days it was a microphone and generally the sound was good but with great potential for feedback and lack of clarity.

At some point one gets discussed with either playing slumber numbers for glass clinkers or the horrible sound that destroyed your desire to play. The latter got to me and I went in search of the best solution for me.

The system that the microphone is used with can greatly affect the sound. It can be the weakest part of the link so when I erected my system for the classical guitar I took great care in making sure that the components were good quality.

My mixer still remains a Mackie 1202. It is inexpensive and with 12 channels and four balanced inputs, it is clean and nicely packaged. Not overkill for me because I use it in many other ways.

I believe that the speaker cabinet is the most crucial part of the classical guitar amplifying system. I had too little money to spend and was forced to buy a lesser quality speaker but I found a way to make them work.

The cabinets I bought for $300 a pair, TOA 12inch with midrange radial horn. The cabinets were designed (bad) in an enclosure that has a resonance frequency about like a guitar body. I had extreme problems with feedback. I later added a transducer to the system to the Shure SM 57 microphone I was using and this cured a lot of the feedback. I would mix 90% transducer and the remainder microphone and this did the trick.

I also packed the cabinets with $30 worth of polyester pillow stuffing. I filled every open spot of the area with this material and it was backed up to the speakers. It greatly improved the sound and resulted in much less feedback. This effectively got rid of that horrible resonance that lived in the same range of the guitar body.

The first generation transducer (piezo) had some very ugly sonic characteristics. They were originally designed, I think, to register and measure stresses to aircraft wings and body parts in flight and not to perform "Feelings" for the Daughters of the American Revolution.

The punch and overall nasal quality of the piezo is downright sick. Correct placement helps but beyond this you'll need some sort of equalization. Reverb can add ambience but it depends on how weak your stomach is for schmaltz.

The combination of the piezo and mike was adequate for a reasonable sound to me. I used no signal processors or reverb and performed "Feelings" to the semi-delight of my ear.

One of the reasons that I think my system, at this point, sounded adequate was that I chose a home stereo power amp. I used a NAD 180 watt stereo power amp. This was a warm and powerful amp for classical music at home and I'd just grab it when I gigged.

Later I began to do larger venues with a percussionist. This would necessitate renting a soundman with system.

The problems of, for instance, performing outdoors starts with an increase in volume. There is potential feedback from the microphone and even the piezo will start to howl at some point of volume increase.

With a soundman I didn't have to worry about it and the volumes were "ridden" by him to keep the feedback down. Still it was a less than ideal sound for the nylon string guitar, never mind that you're basically nailed to a spot on a stage with this surrounding mess of chords and boxes.

Some say that the microphone is the answer to amplifying a classical guitar and getting the most accurate sound there is. I say it is not except in the studio.

What a microphone lacks is the immediacy of the sound. Depending on the distance and type of mike you are using, a degree of the room will enter the field and the proximity effect will change the sound of your instrument greatly.

I've already said the first generation piezo's sound is sick but it does one thing that is completely desirable; it amplifies the immediacy of the top moving. Some call it punch, the sound is bad but there is no proximity effect and room.

It is natural to use both methods and many manufactures have combined internal microphones on mini-goose necks and bridge transducers to great effect. There are a dozen systems out there that will install on the guitar and sound very nice.

I won't take a knife to my guitars. I'm not a snob about it I just don't want to drill holes and cut slots in my classical guitar. If the guitar was built that way than it is a different story if I can afford it.

So at the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA 2003, I was ripe for an encounter with the Schertler Dyn-G electrodynamic transducer.

Meeting Stephan Schertler, pictured left above, at the Schertler booth you immediately can recognize a man with mission.

Originally a double bass performer his original search was to handle the requirements of that instrument. He studied mechanical engineering in Austria when he was 18.

He continued to pursue Jazz Studies at the St. Gallen jazz conservatory and at 24 he was selected for the inaugural class.

In 1986 he began to directly address the specific problem of amplifying double bass, a highly dynamic and complex instrument.

Taking note that the piezo-based pickup was simple, had little or no feedback and isolated signals between instruments, Schertler used this as a point of departure.

The problem with a piezo is that there is almost no differential in the sound. Tone subtleties are lost. Articulations are so apparent with the sound of the material of the strings and your nail being the first thing you hear.

What Schertler has added to the piezo is moving coil, which is allowed to move through a magnetic field to create a voltage differential. The differential is created by the performer manipulating their instrument as they ordinarily would.

The fact that it adheres to the guitar top, with a gum, there is absolute isolation and no room ambience. It enlarges the guitar without enlarging the room and ambient noise like a microphone does.

Unlike an ordinary piezo the dynamism of the moving coil acts more like a microphone and it enables the reproduction of the actual sound of your guitar.

I conducted my tests with a 2001 Reynolds spruce double-top with Brazilian rosewood back and sides.

I used one or two DYN-G transducers as seen here. I used two for a stereo signal to use with stereo processors.

First of all the gum provided is the best substance that I've ever used to affix a transducer. It is the consistency of a bubble gum that has been chewed but has been tacit for an hour or so.

It creates a perfect seal and it is as solid as some of the early double sides tape but has no residue and seems not to affect the French polish of my Reynolds. Lou Roten of Schertler USA said that it is not recommended to leave it on for days but I did leave it on for three days in a dark room and to no effect. You'd figure that if you left it on in sunlight for a week you'd have a dark spot where the gum was. Otherwise, with this warning alone, it seems very noninvasive to French polish, the lightest and most natural finishes for an instrument.

My system consists of a Mackie 1202 mixer, two packed TOA 12 inch cabinets with radial horn and a Peavey 260 watt stereo amp.

I use three specially programmed processors; DigiTech TSR 12 and 24 and a Lexicon LXP-15.

The TSR-12 was used primarily for a "backtone" guitar I made, that incorporates a transducer nut. This was A Yamaha SBG-1000 electric guitar and I used this system to score film and modern dance music. I also used this system with constant control MIDI pedals in a free improvisation group called The Vortexans.

Primarily the TSR-12 with the backtone guitar was a noise generator, the transducer nut allowed the logarithmic inverse (from fingered note to nut) to be heard. Also it allowed for a massive color change to the sound of the guitar pickups. The TSR-24 and LXP-15 are used for room sounds.

I have also used this system with amplified classical guitar. When I would do a solo program I would free improvise with the sounds of the TSR-12. Eventually, I used a Soloette for the mere ease of setup.

The first thing I was to find out was how the DYN-G reproduced the sound of my Reynolds guitar. This guitar is my main performing guitar for almost a year now and I know the sound well.

The first place I affixed the DYN-G to, the obvious south-of-the-bridge place and a little behind captured the Reynolds perfectly. There was no question about it! This guitar has an extremely distinctive sound and there it was with all of the nuances of its individual voice. I had no processor affecting the sound and the three bands of equalization were flat.

Since it is not a microphone there is plenty of headroom in volume so I was allowed to really crank it before there was a sign of feedback.

After an hour of playing I had to fiddle with the thing so I took it off and spoke into the DYN-G and there is complete isolation to my voice. I moved the transducer to on the bridge, on the treble side and the sound changed slightly to add highs.

At this point I added the second transducer in a spot that I though would add more lows than the first spot and combined the two.

The first things that I noticed is that I doubled the signal and there was still no more noise due to the XLR cables.

While speaking with Lou Roten I admitted a dark secret about classical guitarists; they hate to amplify therefore when they do, they make absolutely no fuss about it. A Fender Champ Amp, the microphone from your son's tape recorder and an RCA to 1/4-inch adaptor to fit it into the Champ will do, thank you very much! I'm surprised I know what an XLR cable is.

I asked Lou why there is not a 1/4-inch version for us electricity challenged guys who revel in wood? He said it is against Stephan Schertler's ideology of sound. He doesn't want people to sound bad and noisy.

Getting back to the sound of the experiment with the DYN-G, it was truly my Reynolds and as sweet as I wanted. This is not a characteristic of the piezo transducer.

I had to sit there and think; what can I do to foil the sound? Is that all there is? Is it actually the perfect pickup system for the classical guitar? Would anything else enhance the sound?

I went on to my processors to use the vibrating string to make electronic sounds.

Using a transducer to access processors is really a bad way to go, first of all, because they are sonically bad and second the signal is noisy. Using the DYN-G was another story.

The true classical guitar and noiseless signal provided the processors with what they need to operate my programming.

I am now the owner of a pair of DYN-Gs. It's over. The search for the Holy Grail has ended and I'll say you could end your search too.

I'd suggest that you go to Schertler Online and take a look at the varied products that they have developed. There is more technical information about this amazingly accurate sounding pickup.

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