Fishman Powerbridge Pickup for Les Paul

I wasn't sure how this would sound. I had seen a video of Alex Lifeson getting some really nice acoustic sounds out of his PRS on a recent tour. So I started investigating and I found that he uses the Powerbridge in his Les Pauls and something else in his PRS guitars. So I figured I would try this in my LP. Installation was fairly easy. I didn't go for the Powerchip since my plan was to run this through my POD HD500. That lets me send 2 separate inputs to the unit and create patches that treat each input separately. The recent firmware update for the HD500 actually had some acoustic patches in there. So timing was great. I must say this sounded really good using those patches. They are set up to use some very specific EQ curves to really bring out the 'acousticness' of piezos. But I was definitely happy. One thing that needs to be addressed in my situation is the output level of the Powerbridge. I'm using patches to blend the acoustic sound with my magnetic pickups and I find I need to really boost the portion of the patch that is carrying the Powerbridge signal in order to balance it with the magnetic signal. Not a big deal since the HD500 can accommodate that. But if you're going to use this straight to a PA you may want to have some kind of neutral signal boost in your chain. Overall I'm really pleased with the unit.

i got this expecting something really fake sounding, then i got it, and it sounds amazingly real.