Anyone interested in acoustic amplification has likely noticed the growing use of digital tone enhancing tools in the past few years. Modeling tools, which usually are designed to emulate a sound other than its source, are common in the electric guitar world and gaining a foothold in the acoustic realm. Fishman Transducers, the well-known pickup manufacturer, takes a unique approach to digital tone enhancement, however, through the use of its Aura imaging technology which, unlike modeling, accurately mimics the essential or ideal sound of your instrument and makes a pickup-equipped guitar sound more like a guitar played through a good microphone. The latest addition to the product family is the line of six easy-to-use Aura Imaging pedals.

PEDALS TO SUIT YOUR STYLE

Each of Fishman's six different pedals is designed to work with a specific type of guitar. The available pedals are Dreadnought, Concert (for 0 to 00-sized guitars), Orchestra (for OM to auditorium sizes), Jumbo (for larger guitars), Nylon, and 12-String. For best results, Fishman recommends choosing the pedal that most closely matches the body size of your guitar. Like the original Aura, the pedals support guitars with undersaddle or magnetic soundhole pickups, but are not recommended for use with SBTs or microphones.

Unlike the original Aura, with its extensive, programmable feature set, the Aura pedals feature a minimalist interface with three basic controls: a dial for selecting one of 16 fixed images, another that controls the blend of pickup signal and the image, and a volume control. There is also a phase switch for controlling feedback, an input trim control for matching the pedal to your pickup's output level, and a footswitch for activating the pedal.

This deliberately simple interface includes several cool features. The dual-function footswitch normally switches between dry and processed sounds. But hold it down for a few seconds, and it transforms into a mute button. If you plan to use the Aura all the time rather than as an occasional effect, this feature provides an alternate use for the footswitch. The input-clipping-level LED is also dual purpose: it lights steadily when the pedal has about an hour of battery life remaining. The brushed aluminum pedals feel very sturdy, as do the smooth-turning controls, and the pedals look and feel like they're meant to stand up to use and abuse on the road.

TAILORING TONE WITH THE AURA

While the original Aura offers an extensive set of controls for tweaking tone, the Aura pedals are extremely simple to use. After setting the trim control to prevent overloading the input and adjusting the output volume, it's a matter of turning the image switch to find a sound you like, and adjusting the blend. Fishman doesn't provide any information about the identity or inspiration behind the 16 images, but that's just as well—listen and let your ears decide what suits your playing best.

For my test drive, I focused on the Orchestra pedal using a Taylor 914 with a Fishman Acoustic Matrix pickup, a smaller concert-size custom-built guitar with a D-TAR Wave-Length, and a Martin OM with Fishman Rare Earth and Sunrise magnetic pickups. To audition the tone without interference from the direct sound of my guitar, I placed a looper before the Aura pedal. This allowed me to play through the Aura live or stop and listen to the loop—and even fine-tune the Aura settings while the loop continued. I found it fairly easy to get some useful sounds that improved the dry pickup sound. The simple control set offers a surprising amount of command over the tone, and the effect can be subtle or quite dramatic, depending on your taste. Fishman recommends a blend of 65 percent pickup, 35 percent model for live use, with a higher percentage of the image for recording, and the sounds I preferred tended to fall into that range.

Although the Aura added a bit of presence and air when played though my AER Acousticube II, I better appreciated its more subtle nuances when listening through studio monitors. All the images add a more complex high end and a bit of resonance, giving the sound more dimension than the tone of the dry pickup. I found it easiest to dial in a sound I liked with the undersaddle pickups. However, the Aura did help reduce the "electric" quality of the magnetic pickups and added a sparkly high end that complemented the fundamental magnetic sound.

I preferred different images and blends for different playing styles: strumming with a pick versus fingerpicking, for example. When strumming, I liked the way some images emphasized the high end and cut the mids—giving the guitar a nice shimmer that would cut through a mix—but I preferred the warmer sound of lower blend levels and more midrangey models for playing fingerstyle.

THE WRAP

The simplicity of these pedals requires some tradeoffs—the absence of programmable presets, for example. But most performing guitarists and home studio users will enjoy the ease with which they can improve pickup tone. Players that use more than one guitar on stage may be deterred by the prospect of needing multiple pedals, particularly on stages where signal path noise can be a problem. But for those who stick to a single style of guitar and need a simple, high-quality device that improves their tone, an Aura pedal is a cost-effective and attractive option.