Unofficial Taylor Guitar Forum - UTGF
Lessons, Recordings, How Tos, Repair, Accessories => Lessons, Recordings, How Tos, Repair, Accessories => Topic started by: Old Poseur on April 07, 2017, 04:50:25 PM
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I'm a retired lawyer, not an electrical engineer, so please be patient with me. ;) I have a Taylor with the ES2 system. I've looked on line but can't seem to get a straight answer - is there a recommended input impedance for the ES2 system? The reason I ask is that my preamp/DI has three different instrument input impedance settings: low (330), medium (1M) and hi (10M), and while I could match by ear I'd just like to know which setting should work best for the Taylor ES2. Your thoughts are most appreciated!
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Matching by ear is the best setting! ;D
No, seriously, it is. An impedance mis-match results in low volume, noise/hiss, or other unacceptable sonic maladies. But to your point, your ES2 will likely be high impedance, but try it on medium and choose accordingly :)
Edward
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Thanks Edward, that was the approach I thought might be best. But the nerd in me wanted to know for sure. :o
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I'm an electrical engineer not a lawyer so please don't ask for any briefs :) but from what I've seen the ES2 output is driven by an op-amp, which typically has low impedance. Likely in the 10 to 40 ohm range. This would make the 330 ohm setting the best from an electrical point of view. It's good to have some actual current flowing in the cable to help reduce noise. With the 1M and 10M settings there would be almost none. You can't hurt anything from any of the settings but I'm guessing the 1M and 10M would sound thinner and maybe noisier under some conditions.
Phil
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I had a typo in my original post - the low impedence setting on my Grace Design Alix Preamp (feeding an AER Compact 60 Slope) is actually 330KΩ - sorry for any confusion. I'd submitted my question to Taylor as well and here is their reply: "The ES2 is pretty flexible and can plug into any line input >10kΩ without issue. On your amp, I'd try both the medium and high settings to see which one sounded better." I tried all three impedence settings - as suspected there wasn't a huge difference but there was some slight difference. I favored the 330KΩ setting, so that's where it will remain. How to describe the difference - very subtle but in the higher settings the bass notes seemed to sound ever so slightly overloaded. YMMV. Thanks for all the feedback (pun intended). Chris.
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How do you like the sound of your ES2 and how does it compare to the ES1
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The ES2 sounds great, but I have no experience with the ES1