Takamine Cool tube acoustics

[Hollywood]

Does any one here on rig talk have any experience with the Takamine acoustic guitars with the on board tube? The cooltube as they call it...Let me know. I have a new project coming up real soon that will require me to buy a new acoustic. So, I am looking at the world of acoustic electric guitars.....

 

[mentoneman]

Does any one here on rig talk have any experience with the Takamine acoustic guitars with the on board tube? The cooltube as they call it...Let me know. I have a new project coming up real soon that will require me to buy a new acoustic. So, I am looking at the world of acoustic electric guitars.....

for a mid priced acoustic/electric, it would be the guitar/system i'd choose, over taylor, martin, and gibson. the addition of the tube preamp is such a wise feature. softens that hideous piezo metallic pickup peak that destroys most acoustic tones live.

i mix acoustics of all shapes and sizes weekly. mostly taylors, and have mixed doyle dykes and his KILLER black rose sig into his sig rivera sedona amp, which is the best of the taylor tones i've heard imo.
a guy named billy batstone brought in a big baby taylor, downtuned into a demeter tube pre, which was incredible and the second best taylor tone i've heard.

the BEST acoustic i've ever heard period was paul clark's petros "crown of thorns" acoustic. tc scf and a radial JDI passive DI. but the price tag on that baby is outer space.

roby duke always had awesome acoustic tone through his avalon guitars. RIP.

lenny leblanc and phil keaggy are also right there with their olsens.

takamines can be a bit brittle and flat, and the tone varies greatly from one guitar to the next, but a good one (the limited editions are normally pretty great) with that cool tube is money.

i havethis tak and toy with one day installing a cool tube preamp and the fancy pickup of the day but it's also from '77 and has some sentimental value so i'm not totally sure i want to mod it.

hope you find a killer one!

 

[rcm78]

Yes, I have a TAN16C with the cool tube pre. This is a plug and play guitar, I've done dozens of gigs with it through a Bose personal PA and one other acoustic guitar player. Also a Tak.

I blend in about 40% cool tube and 60% standard pre. Theres also an aux input if you want to add a third source.

I compared this guitar with a Taylor 814ce. Now the Taylor was hands down a better guitar, but I wasnt too impressed with the expression system. The few I demo'd had the old version. I understand the new version is a big improvement. For the money The Takamine was a no brainer, and I think it sounds better plugged in then the Taylor did...