I just got a 914ce SB and love it. Played it for days unplugged and was blown away..
Then I set up Bose L1s2 with B2 sub and T1Dmix. I also go through a voicelive extreme 3, so the options for eq are pretty limitless. The sound sucked qwaunky mids, Guitar top noise, pick noise, and a nasal phase problem...
I adjusted for 3 days, even bought a Radial Tonebone pz pre,,,,,,,
Yet nothing fixed it. I’ve been playing live for decades and I could not figure out why my Martin DCPA1 plugged and played so nicely and why this awesome 914cs sound sucked. If you rolled out mids it became thin etc...
I dove into all forums and tech talk I could find. I used to be a avid Ovation player until they sold company and I worked at NASA as a electronic eng, so I know the real history of piezios and how Mr. Kamen created them. He used 6 separate piezios. Everyone else could not do this due to patent. So most went with one piezio under saddle.
This got me thinking. The new approach by Taylor’s ES2 is a great idea 3 separate piezios onto back of bridge nut except. Since bridge nut is one piece there is crosstalk.... the original design of ovation used a bridge kind of like a start or Les Paul every string on its own bridge piece.
I found the low piezio still picks up the d and the high piezio still picks up the g. (I checked this by backing off mid piezio all the way... later to check my thoughts )
So I adjusted 914s piezios rotated mid counter clockwise 90* and adjusted low and high clockwise 45*. Since the new es2 internal pre is mid heavy this did the trick. This lowered the mids and boosted highs and lows a bit. Off setting the extra vibrations picked up from crosstalk.
I believe it is both a over amplification of mids but also a bit of a phase alignment thing between the crosstalk of the strings on the different piezios. After this adjustment my Guitar even plugged straight into bose with flat eq sounds perfect. It went from a nightmare sound with almost unusable b and g string honk to a perfect acoustic tone.
I then went back with equipment and even turned off the amp module for acoustic in voicelive 3e. I still use tonebone pz pre because it sounds awesome and gives you dedicated knobs for eq tweaks live, but not to shape sound just low cut high pass, and mid adjustments for picking or strumming songs...
I was getting scared after spending that kind of money on this Guitar and not getting a good plugged sound. I have read many people trying to explain the qwaunky sound they get and the extreme eqing they do to try and fix it. Don’t be afraid to adjust piezio settings that is the fix not extreme eq...
I hope this helps other to Not Panic..... and remember your Towel, only always...
Jd Ozone
Www.jdozone.com