Mike6112 Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 I haven't been around the amp scene for a long time. Is there an electric amp that will sound good for acoustic guitar? What about one under $500.00? HELP!!??!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pearl_rocker Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 in the opinion of a long time sound guy, not for under $500 i don't think. I've been running sond for the church i attend in Sumner, WA. of about 3,500 people, so building is quit large and no matter what you do you can't make an accoustic sound good through the system, and it is even crappier on stage. Now the amps I work around are all like Fenders except a couple and most are mid priced probably betwen $300-$500 and when they plug in and accoustics it just sucks. But I encourage that you go to guitar shops and try them out because you can at some, so just listen to them and choose the best one for the best price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wickerman Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 It depends on the amp and the pickup/mic for the acoustic. Most peizos won't sound good. Period. They don't sound like an acoustic. Martin mixes a small mic mounted on the underside of the bridge and an undersaddle peizo on higher end models which sounds pretty good. Fender mixes a peizo and an accelorometer in the GA43 and GA45 models which sounds more natural than anything else I've heard besides mics. With mics, placement and mic model is very imprortant. There are a could soundhole pickups I've heard that sound decent. Better than a peizo at least. With amps, some tube amps will break up with higher signals. Some active preamps for undersaddle pickups generate a high output that will distort in some tube amps. Solid state amps will stay cleaner but, don't sound as warm as tube and when using a peizo you need every bit of positive tone you can get! To answer your original question, yes, you can get a good sound out of a guitar amp using an acoustic guitar. My best friend uses a Dean Markley Pro Mag gold through a solid state amp which sounds pretty good. A guy I know, not really a friend but we play sometimes, anyway, he uses a small circular transducer that mounts next to his bridge which sounds great through his Trace Elliot tube 4x12. I use a Shure Beta 58 about 6" from my soundhole into a mixer when I play acoustic... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dak Lander Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 Mike, What are you trying to do? Do you have a pa available or is this just for getting louder? You can get reasonably good sound with the right amp & alot of fiddling with controls. Particularly if you are running a pickup of some kind or another direct into the amp. Better would be mic'ing the acoustic into the amp. (clean) It'll still take some work to get the sound right. If you can, run into a pa system, either mic'd or with a pickup. The mic will be the best way but you may experience the dreaded feedback a bit easier. I've run through several amps, via pickup and got reasonable sound but usually go through my pa when I go that way. One tube amp that does work pretty well for that is the Fender Hot Rod Deville 2X12 running clean. It'll dial in with most pickups & it's so damned loud you can often run it on cruise & not get to a point of overdriving it. Ozark Instruments can set you up with some pretty good pickups. Talk to Dave. Our Joint "When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it." The Duke... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wewus432 Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 An electric guitar amp will attenuate the charateristic high frequencies of an acoustic guitar, in other words make it sound like an electric guitar. If you look at a so called acoustic amp, they have that extra piezo horn to reproduce the high frequencies just like a keyboard amp or a pa speaker. The best thing to do is plug your acoustic/electric into a pa channel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 There are amps made for acoustic guitar, also keyboard amps are hi-fi. Just stay away from any of them that use piezo tweeters. Piezos suck and make plastic sounding transducers sound even more plastic sounding. I always just run acoustic into the board and mix it in the monitors so I can hear myself. Monitors are just like the above mentioned amps. Don't get the ones with piezo tweets. -David http://www.garageband.com/artist/MichaelangelosMuse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike6112 Posted April 13, 2002 Author Share Posted April 13, 2002 The whole story is that I've been playing for my own enjoyment for a long time, and until recently, didn't need an amp. I've been playing for our church using an acoustic guitar and running it through the PA and a very old powered micro monitor for my own monitoring. We recently started a rockier Saturday night service where I have the opportunity to pull out my electric, but I really need an amp for it to sound good. It's been a while since I've played on it and it sure would be nice to get back into it. The problem is that I am told that I really need an acoustic amp, which I thought was probably right and only enough bucks to buy one amp, and at 500.00 even that poses problems. Anyway, I really appreciate all the information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wewus432 Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 An acoustic amp is not going to do much more than a channel on the pa. You get a little more control that way using a seperate amp and some of them sound good but I just don't think it's worth the expense. I used to have a Trace Elliot acoustic amp which is a $1100.00 amp and it has some nice features on it and sounded great but I went back to using a pa channel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cg1155 Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 Hey Mike, I'm in almost exactly that same church type situation and although I'm not a guitar player I can tell you what ours does. He used to have a Marshall 4x12 cab with a Marshall head but dumped it for a practice amp that he miked. My guess is that he did it because most of his tone comes from his stomp box, but the practice amp has pretty nice distortion. The practice amp is mic'd and goes through the PA. So he monitors his electric through the practice amp but the audience hears the PA. This only works if you have a pretty nice PA, which most churches do IMHO. On acoustic he just monitors through a floor monitor and the audience hears through the PA. Unfortunately if you don't have enough monitor channels you can get in a bind here with the vocalists who don't necessarily want to hear that much guitar. We did have an acoustic player who played through a marshall 4x12 cab with a solidstate effects box and the marshall dual head tube amp, his acoustic sound was really very good IMHO. If I was in this situation looking for a $500 amp I would think about the Tech 21 Trademark 10 or the Tech 21 Trademark 60 combo amps. They're small but they would work well in the situation I described and the models they used were thought to be pretty good in a recent issue of Keyboard. -Casey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike6112 Posted April 14, 2002 Author Share Posted April 14, 2002 Thanks everyone for helping. I will probably just leave my acoustic in the PA without a separate amp, (Boohoo), and buy an electric amp that I can use for my electric guitar, (YEEEAAAAHHHH)!!! I don't get the hours on my electric and frankly need the practice on it. Thanks again for all the help!!! Mike soon not to be ampless! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike6112 Posted April 14, 2002 Author Share Posted April 14, 2002 Originally posted by TheWewus: [QB]An acoustic amp is not going to do much more than a channel on the pa. That's most likely what I will do. Thanks for helping! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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