Acoustic guitar with LR Baggs Lyric pickup into Kemper Stage.
About 9 months ago in the middle of a gig, the output became gated and distorted. It sounded like the 9 volt for my pickup was dying so we took a break and I dropped a new one in. It didn't fix the issue so I slapped a vocal mic in front of the guitar and continued on with the gig. The next morning I plugged everything in and it all sounded fine. I never figured it out and it never happened again until this past weekend. Except this time, the issue is still happening today so I've been troubleshooting...
My pickup has a volume knob and no other controls. If the knob is all the way up (where I normally keep it) the signal into the Kemper is gated and distorted. I have to play hard for it to come through and when I do, it's distorted. If I turn the volume down on the guitar I eventually hit a sweet spot where everything sounds fine (except weaker than normal since the volume is lower). So it sounds like the Kemper is gating the signal - almost like an overload protection feature.
The problem is that this never happened outside of these two instances and as I said, the first time it happened, it went away the next day without me changing anything. I've been using the same guitar (at full volume) and the Kemper Stage for several years almost every weekend.
Additional information:
- I've played with this setup having the pickup at full volume for years and it's sounded great, with no gating or distortion, until now.
- I tested the guitar in other devices to rule out the issue being with the pickup rather than the Kemper. No issues in other amps/processors at full volume.
- Noise Gate feature under the Input section is at 0.0 as are Clean and Distortion Sens.
- This happens with any Rig loaded
- This happens even with no stomp effects applied to the Rig
- The master volume on the Kemper Stage has no effect on the issue
- I've never had this issue with any other guitar (acoustic or electric)
- I've compared the output signal level from my acoustic guitar with several of my electric guitars. The signal from the acoustic guitar is not any stronger than the signal from any of my other guitars.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
Jon