There’s a wide variety of pedal-format devices available to improve your acoustic guitar’s amplified tone, including Fishman’s Aura, Line 6’s HX Stomp, and LR Baggs’ Voiceprint DI.
From DIs to multi-effects processors to IRs, there are plenty of ways to make your sound golden.
Whether you’re a professional player, weekend warrior, or a once-in-a-blue-moon open miker, you will likely be put in a position to play both electric and acoustic instruments on a gig. As you’re looking to build your switch-hitting pedalboard, you may find that electric and acoustic guitar processing haven’t exactly been treated equitably in the marketplace. Even a bog-standard electric guitar rig these days is populated with three overdrives du jour and a gaggle of space-age DSP-driven effects culled from a market saturated with bobs and bits intended to fatten your sound and thin your wallet. When compared to the smorgasbord of electric guitar processing products, the selection of acoustic-guitar-specific offerings may seem a bit spartan.
But flattop pickers need not be forlorn! I’ve had the opportunity to build lots of guitar rigs for players who needed to serve both the electric and acoustic parts of a setlist, and there are many options for getting your acoustic signal out of your instrument and into the PA. Some of these builds were biased toward the electric side of things, when acoustic playing was just a small part of the job description, and others were mostly acoustic-minded affairs with just a sprinkling of electric-centric equipment. You’ll need to look at your situation to determine how much board real estate and budget resources you should be allocating to your double-minded setup.
The simplest way to get your acoustic instrument’s sound to the PA is to add a plain old DI to your board. I’d highly recommend the transformer-isolated variety, like the Radial ProDI ($114 street) or, if you can spring for it, something like their J48 ($229 street), which includes a higher-quality Jensen transformer. You can stick this DI to your board with a permanently connected guitar cable and simply plug in your acoustic when you need it. Neutrik silentPLUGs ($12 street) will help you avoid those nasty connecting/disconnecting pops as you transition from electric to acoustic by automatically muting the unused signal chain.
If you wind up sharing effects between acoustic and electric, be cautious about the settings of your overdrives and distortion pedals.
Maybe you’d like to have only one instrument cable into your rig? Put a simple A/B switch in front of your first electric pedal and the DI. Whenever you select your DI, the electric chain will be muted. Turn off the effects in your electric chain, particularly overdrives and distortions, to keep the white noise from the deselected backline amp at a minimum. Switching the A/B selector back to the electric will effectively mute the DI output to front-of-house. You’ll need to be careful here as you can accidentally send electric guitar to FOH or acoustic guitar to your backline amp if you lose track of the state of your A/B switch. You can alter this arrangement by putting additional effects after the A/B switch and in front of your DI or sharing effects in both chains by putting your A/B switch after your electric-guitar effects. If you wind up sharing effects between acoustic and electric, be cautious about the settings of your overdrives and distortion pedals. Accidentally engaging one could lead to some surprising—and painfully loud—results. The line between exciting and execrable can be very thin.
If you want to go beyond the straight piezo-pickup sound of your acoustic, consider acoustic imaging. You can replace your simple DI with something like Fishman’s Aura Spectrum ($399 street) or LR Baggs’ Voiceprint ($399 street), which use impulse responses (IRs) and DSP to produce realistic miked and in-the-room sounds from a humble undersaddle bridge pickup. Alternatively, if your rig already contains something like the Line 6 HX Stomp ($649 street), you can use it to process and route your acoustic signal. Several purveyors produce acoustic IRs that you can load as effect blocks on your Stomp (3 Sigma Audio and Worship Tutorials are two). You can then use your Stomp’s FX send port to connect it to a plain external DI and configure your specific electric and acoustic presets so they output to the correct port. An additional benefit to this type of setup is that you have access to all the HX Stomp effects as well, so compression, modulation, delay, and reverb are readily available for your acoustic processing needs.
Whether you connect your acoustic instrument to the PA via a run-of-the-mill DI or the latest in high-tech signal processing, there are many ways to sound great in our amplified world. Don’t let your electrics have all the fun, bring acoustic signal processing into your pedalboard world!
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Megadeth founder teams up with Gibson for his first acoustic guitar in the Dave Mustaine Collection.
For the new acoustic guitar, Gibson acoustic luthiers in Bozeman, Montana collaborated with Dave Mustaine the legendary guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and founder of the multi-platinum selling and Grammy Award-winning band, Megadeth. The Gibson Dave Mustaine Songwriter in Ebony is available in a both a standard version and a limited edition model, signed by the artist. Part of the Dave Mustaine Collection, the new Dave Mustaine Songwriter in Ebony is the first 24-fret neck ever installed on a Gibson acoustic guitar. With a slightly thinner walnut body, the Dave Mustaine Songwriter guitar features a cutaway for easy access to the upper frets.
Megadeth has gone on to sell more than 50 million albums worldwide, earning many accolades along the way, including a Grammy Award for the title track from their most recent album Dystopia, along with 12 additional Grammy nominations, as well as five consecutive platinum/multi-platinum albums. Megadeth has headlined many of the biggest stages in the world and recently played their most successful tour ever, closing every night on the North American amphitheater “Metal Tour of the Year”. Also, a New York Times bestselling author and sought after speaker, host, and commentator, Mustaine has remained a standard bearer for metal and heavy guitar rock, combining a musical and technical standard with the punk and rock n’ roll ethos and attitude.
Icons: Dave Mustaine of Megadeth
Explore the new Dave Mustaine Songwriter in Ebony, www.gibson.com.
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Need an affordable distortion pedal? Look no further.
We live in the golden age of boutique pedals that are loaded with advanced features—many of which were nearly unthinkable a decade or so ago. But there’s something that will always be valuable about a rock-solid dirt box that won’t break your wallet. Here’s a collection of old classics and newly designed stomps that cost less than an average concert ticket.
JHS Series 3 Overdrive
This OD is part of the company’s Series 3 line which offers affordable stomps with simple control setups. Along with volume and drive controls, it offers a body knob that tweaks the EQ and a gain switch that moves between more saturated and crunchier sounds.
$99 street
Nobels ODR-Mini
Thanks to an extremely dedicated following among Nashville session cats, the other green stomp is now offered in a downsized setup. It can run up to 18V for increased headroom and sports glow-in-the-dark knobs for those extremely dark stages.
$79 street
TC Electronic MojoMojo
This all-analog distortion offers classic, vintage-inspired tones with a familiar control setup of volume, gain, bass, and treble. The real secret sauce is in the voice switch, which allows you to move between a more natural sound and a bass cut.
$59 street
Boss DS-1
Since 1978, the DS-1 has been a go-to for generations of guitarists. It offers a scooped sound that can take you from grunge to shred and has been affordable for decades.
$58 street
EarthQuaker Devices Plumes
Although loosely based on a classic circuit, EQD has replaced the 4558 IC with a JFET op-amp for a more mid-focused sound. In addition to the standard controls, the toggle switch moves between two different clipping options or no clipping at all for a wide-open clean boost.
$99 street
Electro-Harmonix East River Drive
A JRC4558 IC-loaded circuit that creates the classic symmetrical overdrive sound, this is an all-analog affair that is true bypass, housed in a rock-solid chassis, and can run on a 9-volt battery—which is included.
$77 street
Fender Hammerstone Overdrive
One of the newest entries on this list is a retro-looking stomp that offers some interesting features under the hood. The original circuit allows you to control the mids before the gain stage, plus there’s an internal trim pot to wrangle the high end.
$79 street
Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini
One of the most popular stompboxes of all time has been shrunk down to a mini-sized wonder. With an oversized drive knob and two smaller tone and level controls, this green monster aims to cop all the classic midrange tones of the original.
$79 street
Pro Co Rat 2
Is it a fuzz? Or a distortion? Or an overdrive? Well, thanks to the famous filter control, you can blur the lines between all the different flavors of dirt. It offers a totally analog signal path, glow-in-the-dark graphics, and the trademark heavy-duty enclosure.
$79 street
MXR Distortion+
There’s no mistaking that shade of yellow. This dead-simple setup offers output and distortion controls along with a vintage-sounding germanium clipping circuit that does everything in its power to blur the line between overdrive and fuzz.
$89 street
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