• Pretty Sweet

  
  As reviewed by Christopher on 7/4/2011

  I am very impressed with this product. I am no expert in sound engineering, but I can hear a drastic positive change in the tonal quality of the amplified output with the Spectrum Aura. It actually makes playing my acoustic guitar through an amp and making home recordings fun again. I use it as the primary device on my pedal board with the other effects in the effects loop on the Spectrum. I then run out to an amp via the XLR connection. This results in a very low noise and beautifully sounding configuration. You should expect to spend a fair amount of time testing different images to find the one that works best for each of your instruments. You will most likely need different images for each of them. It's a painstaking process of updating the 16 user defined slots with images that most closely match your instrument and then playing through each of them several times to figure out which one sounds best. I found that using a looping device like the Boss Loop Station makes this easier as you can play it once and then just loop it as you run through the various images several times until one sticks with you as sounding the best. It would be pretty difficult and less effective to do it while also playing at the same time. Another good piece of information to know is that the effects loop on the device is an "insert style" effects loop. It might be common knowledge to some, but I had to do some online research to figure this out. The user manual doesn't elaborate on the effects loop at all other than a brief mention in the documentation for the signal path. You will notice that there is only one jack for effects loop. Basically the effects loop jack is a stereo jack. So the mono send and return are both channeled through this one jack. In order to use it, you'll need a special cable called an "insert cable" that is basically a Y cable with a 1/4 in stereo plug on one end with two 1/4 in. mono plugs split off from it on the other end. One will be labelled "tip" and the other "ring" corresponding to the portion of the stereo plug which they feed. The "tip" plug goes into the input of your first effect in the chain. The "ring" plug goes in the output of the last effect in the chain and the stereo plug connects to effect loop plug on the Spectrum Aura creating the effects loop. Luckily GuitarCenter sells a fairly inexpensive cable for this. It is the "LiveWire STP-201 Send-Return Insert Cable" The device has built-in images in 7 banks in addition to the 16 user defined slots in 1 bank, but I find these built-in banks to be almost entirely useless because it's difficult to know exactly what each of the slots is. The user documentation has some tables defining which is which, but they don't seem to be in any logical order. So the real beauty of this device are the 16 user-defined slots. So that's my only real complaint about it...I wish they had just made all 8 banks of 16 slots writable by the end user.

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• Acoustic Enhancement

  
  As reviewed by Richard Topping on 3/1/2010

  The first thing to note is that this is NOT an effects box. Fishman uses Aura to tackle the age-old issue that undersaddle pickups offer advantages for live performances, especially in noisy environments, but cannot reproduce the mellow acoustic sound of a miked guitar. Therefore, it should not be used to make a six string sound like a twelve string, an electric like an acoustic, etc. The Aura system digitizes actual miked tracks from real guitars and then simulates the sound when playing with an undersaddle pickup through the Fishman system. The idea is to find images created using a guitar as close to yours as possible. Fishman recommends a blend of about 35% Aura image and 65% pickup for live playing which seems to work well for me playing Martin Dreadnaught and OM models. Aura also really enhances nylon string guitars. This Spectrum product combines DI box features with the Aura sound images. I am used to a Baggs Para Acoustic DI and the Fishman seems a reasonable substitute when using it as a DI. The choice of XLR or 1/4" out to a mixing board is a nice feature that I haven't seen in earlier Fishman products. The real advantage however comes from being able to blend in actual studio guitar presence to the mix. There are over a hundred images built in for various acoutic guitar types (as well as mandolins and fiddles)and more can be downloaded from Fishman online. A specific sixteen image bank can also be stored for easy access by the user. Further, the system can be used in the studio to improve a track previously recorded using a pickup. All in all, highly recommended.

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• Excellent!

  
  As reviewed by Billy on 10/26/2009

  For live performing, I prefer to use my Carvin AC-175, a solid body acoustic. I also have a Telecaster with Graph Tech piezo saddles and a b-bender. The third guitar I use is a Fender Telecoustic. The Aura Spectrum brings all of these guitars to life with genuine acoustic guitar sounds. Because these guitars are not your basic acoustic guitar body shapes, it does take a while to find the image that works best for each guitar, and when the best image is found, it is further fine tuned using the powerful bass, mid, high,mix and compressor controls. Expect to take some time to dial this puppy in. I have a little drawing a "settings map" on a piece of tape on the front of the unit to help me remeber the settings for each guitar. There are also a bunch more images on a CD that comes with the Spectrum. People at gigs comment on the amazing tone I'm getting. I've played bluegrass for a long time and really don't like the piezo sound. The Spectrum takes care of that and more....

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