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EVAN SCOTT: This is Evan Scott for D-TAR, Duncan-Turner Acoustic Research, here at the Summer NAMM Show in Austin. We have some exciting new products to show you from D-TAR, the first of which is installed in this beautiful Guild guitar. The problem with a lot of pickups in acoustic guitar is that they sound like a box of ducks, and it's just not pretty at all. Well at D-TAR, we've dne something about it. First of all, we're running our pickups, under-saddle pickups, off of 18 volts of power. With 18 volts of power, you have more headroom, and you have less of that quacky-type of distortion that acoustic guitar players really hate, but how do you get 18 volts of power into a guitar like this? Well you could use two 9-volt batteries but at D-TAR we have developed a new system that works together with our Wavelength under-saddle pickup and preamp, and this battery access system is called Load & Lock, and that's exactly what you do. You unscrew this little collar on the other side of the guitar and out pops two AA batteries. Now, how do you get 18 volts out of two AA batteries? A proprietary voltage booster circuit that allows us to boost the voltage up to 18 volts, and that's really all you need to do to change your pickups and change your batteries and get 18 volts of power into your D-TAR-loaded Guild guitar. These are available exclusively from Guild Guitar, but look for them on the shelves next year. There's a rumor that D-TAR may be offering them as an over-the-counter product.

Behind me you can hear the same guitar being played by our product manager, Matt Blackett, and he's playing through the D-TAR Mama Bear preamp. Mama Bear is a really exciting new concept in acoustic guitar preamps. It's a digital pream that allows us to take the signal coming off of an acoustic guitar to an analog-to-digital conversion, and by doing this what we can do is eliminate the sound of the pickup and then bring back in the sound of any of 16 different acoustic guitars that are emulated in Mama Bear. So first let's listen to Matt play with Mama Bear bypass. So this is just the sound of the pickup.

[MATT BLACKETT PLAYING ACOUSTIC GUITAR WITH THE MAMA BEAR PREAMP BYPASSED]

EVAN SCOTT: Now, Mama Bear's AGE technology kicks in.

[MATT BLACKETT PLAYING ACOUSTIC GUITAR WITH THE MAMA BEAR PREAMP ENGAGED]

EVAN SCOTT: We can also emulate other guitars, even guitars like a resonator guitar.

[MATT BLACKETT PLAYING ACOUSTIC GUITAR WITH THE MAMA BEAR PREAMP ENGAGED]

EVAN SCOTT: Mama Bear is available exclusively from D-TAR. That's Duncan-Turner Acoustic Research. You can read all about it and see some other videos of Mama Bear at dtar.com, D-T-A-R.