Acoustic with built-in transducer and going direct

bluesfordan

Member
I recently purchased an acoustic that came with built in passive transducer. I tested it through my USB interface and while it does work fairly well I was wondering about some options.

There really isn't much in the way of tone control when going direct. I was thinking perhaps some sort of outboard DI for acoustic would allow for greater flexibility in tone shaping. Is there much difference between a DI for recording and a DI for a combo amp?

Acoustic is still a fairly new animal to me, I've been an electric player since day 1.
 
Passive transducers, to me, usually means under-saddle piezo (aka UST) and they always sound better with a higher load than most DIs or interfaces provide. I have a Fire Eye Dee-Eye and also a polytune^3 (in buffered mode) going into a Pro-DI (Radial) that I use for open mics. They both have a 1Mohm load. This is also good for the K&K type pickup systems. Or you can get a DI or preamp designed for those kinds of pickups.

Most combo amps do not have that high of impedance unless it’s been designed for acoustic guitars.

I don’t record pickups at home but it’s the only thing I record at open mics. Some are “Ok” as far as actually sounding like a guitar but some still sound pretty bad IMO. (If the pickup sounds better than the mic’d guitar something is wrong.)
 
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