Has anyone here had experience with the Helpinstill grand piano pick up? How does it sound?

HEY MAN, Ive been using them for years.They are the BEST piano mics Ive ever used.And now Helpinstill has a new stereo pickup that is supposed to be better then the originals.I have not used them yet,but the ones I use in my Helpinstill Grand still rocks.

I haven't used them ... but they seem interesting. Vendor web site: Helpinstill (there is also a Wikipedia entry).

A well-respected pianist has this to offer:

quote:

...When I used Helpinstills ... in the '80s I wasn't knocked out by the sound, but I'm sure the technology has progressed (though maybe away from pickups and towards boundary mics.)

For live work I think the AMT piano mic is great. For sessions where the piano will be featured I bring along a {considerably more expensive} Royer SF-24 active stereo ribbon mic and Universal Audio 2-610 mic pre. Now that's a piano sound!

I also inferred that with the Helpinstills the sound quality is heavily dependent on the quality of the piano itself, whereas some other micing setups may be a bit more "forgiving".

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Dan Cornett,

The Helpenstill is (I think, it certaily was) a magnetic pickup, like a big long electric guitar pickup. So its character is mostly determined by the string character, which is of course modulated somewhat by the other resonant parts of the instrument (sound board, bridge, etc). Like all more-direct pickup methods, it probably has a relatively high gain before feedback, unlike mics. And the louder you play, the more the feedback loop influences tone. This is much more the fact for microphone pickup.

Since the Helpenstill is primarily a string pickup, my guess is it is much more immune to overall piano quality. I do think, however, that if you have a bad-sounding instrument, even if it is in tune, you are doomed no matter what you amplify it with. Get out the digital instead.

I never heard a Helpenstill setup thru our system but would love to some time. It would probably benefit a lot from a special preset.

Well, I bought the Helpinstil grand piano pickup and installed it (easy to do. took about 2 hours until I was satisfied with the ballance but now that I've done it, I could do it in about 25 minutes) in the grand piano on my church's stage. (for my day gig I'm a church music director)

We have a rectangular auditorium that seats about 450 max per service. The music is basically pop/ rock in style with V-drums, bass, 2 guitars, synth, grand piano, and some (between 3 and 9) vocals plus the occaisional horn section. We've never been able to mic the grand piano to our satisfaction and for a while were using digital but the piano players all loved playing the grand so much that we went back to it even with the sonic compromise. It's one thing to mic a grand playing alone in a studio but when the stage has all those other instruments rockin' the grand piano mics end up picking up so much ambient sound that things get really messy.

Anyway, back to the Helpinstil. Everyone (all the piano players, sound men, and other musicians) agrees that this is a really musical sounding pickup. It sounds much better than any mic approach we've tried (admittedly, we've only tried a few) and is vitrually feedback free and is immune to other sounds on the stage. It's kind of not quite as perfect as a digital, but we all seem to prefer it. It really sits in the mix well and lets the grand piano sound like a grand piano.

I'm planning on purchasing a few Bose units sometime this summer for my folk band and will definitely bring them to church to see how the piano sounds through them at that time. My suspicion, after reading about others' challenges with grand pianos on this forum, is that this pickup would be the way to go if you're determined to use a real piano. Like Cliff said, it would probably benefit from a preset but I must say that we usually end up running a very flat EQ on the piano channel on the church's mixing board. It really sounds right without much tweeking.

Hi Fuzby,

Where are you located? There are a number of AD folks who would be happy to demo a system at your church.

Dan

Hi Dan,

I was not aware of Bose Assisted Direct Sales. What do you guys do?

BTW- my church is located in North West New Jersey (Netcong).

-Fuzby

Hi Fuzby,

We are a group of independent contractors for Bose.com that give product demonstrations of the L1. Many of us have multiple systems available and valuable experience using them in a variety of performance situations. We also offer personal customer service that is unprecedented in the industry.We are primarily gigging musicians and have some DJs in the program as well. Our focus is on the people or organizations who are not inclined to visit a Guitar Center. When you decide to order your systems at Bose.com, we walk you through the process, you mention your reps name and we get credit for the sale.

Typically, the free demo is a huge jump start to using the systems. Between a private demo and follow up support, it's like doubling your 45 day trial period. If you have spent much time studying the forum, you'll be way ahead as well.

As a former volunteer music director, I understand how difficult is is to try and get the whole team and key individuals to attend a product demo, but it is the most effective use of everyone's time and the chance to hear multiple systems in action. For the time and effort required by the reps, it isn't cost effective to make multiple visits if key individuals fail to attend.

Here is the link to our group. There are a few in your area.

If you have any problems being able to get a timely demonstration, please drop me a private post and I can work with you to find a satisfactory solution.

Let me know how you do.

Dan

I know it's been a while since I made this post but I finally purchased a Bose L-1 and got to try it out with the Helpinstill piano pickup on my church's 6 foot grand piano.

First, after over 2 years of using the Helpinstill pickup, I still give it high ratings. I agree that a slightly better solo piano sound can be achieved with a mic like the AMT piano mic that Dan mentioned in his post, but for playing acoustic piano along with a band, the Helpinstill is the way to go - no feedback whatsoever, no ambient sounds picked up, and a great natural tone with virtually no EQ (it doesn't even need a battery or phantom power!).

Anyway, I got to try it with my L-1 last week and it worked great. Very natural tone. I agree with Cliff that a Bose preset would be great but even with "no setting" it sounded more than fine. It filled the room really evenly back to about 85 feet from the speakers and then it dropped off more quickly. This combination easily sounded good enough for a solo piano performance, let alone for band performances. I can't see any reason why someone who has acoustic pianos available and wants to play them through an L-1 couldn't be very happy with this pickup. It installs and uninstalls quickly, travels easy and works and sounds great.

Thanks for letting us know how the Helpinstill is working for you, Fuzby -- and how it sounds through the L1.

That's what the L1 is supurb at: taking a great sound and distributing it uniformly.

With regard to the "drop off" at 85' -- what was it that "dropped off"? Perhaps you could describe the room a bit (dimensions, construction, etc) and where the L1 and B1's were placed.

For example, if the room has a very high ceiling, and the "drop-off" was in the low-end (e.g.: lower two octaves of the piano), then that is a reasonable expectation due to the B1's being "conventional" speakers and not having the same "line-array" characteristics of the L1 column. If you haven't read it yet, you may be interested in the L1 Wiki article about "Bass Response". Indoors, B1 positioning can have a significant affect on the bass response in various parts of the room.

I've tried BOTH the Helpinstill AND the AMT, and I gotta say I was not at all pleased with either one.

That said, however, I've been dependent on using 2 PZM's, which typically sound great, but have to deal with them picking up everything in the room as well (creates a nasty "snowball" effect in that as the picked up audience gets louder so do I --and so on).

Right now, though, I'm doing a piano-bar gig, where people are actually sitting AT the piano, so that factor has now intensified 10-fold.

My only option at this point WOULD have to be the Helpinstill --but the last time I tried them in my previous gig, despite all the tweaking and adjustments I could possibly do, they made that piano (which, admittedly, was a major POS) sound WAY too "electric grand"-like (especially in the the mid-section) --not at all pleasing, so I actually ended up returning them.

But, like I said, no matter what, these may be my only option for this gig --problem is, though, I'm not sure Helpinstill would sell me another one knowing I returned the first.

With regards to the AMT, didn't like the way IT sounded either, but, as I mentioned in that previous thread, I just don't even see how just 1 mic can cover the entire sound spectrum of a piano anyway.

I use a barcus berry pickup in combination with an SM58 Shure mic.

The barcus berry is in a channel that I EQ with the highs rolled off. The SM58 channel has the lows rolled off. I run them panned hard left and right. The piano is a Young Chang baby grand and I don't get too bad of an "electric grand" sound out of it. Sounds full.

Cameron in Atlanta