What does your electric guitar do for you that an acoustic can't?

fujauroste

New member
I've been playing around with overdrive pedals etc with my acoustic guitar. They make it sound like an electric!

For those of you who play both, what are you getting from your electric that you can't get with your acoustic + effects pedals?
 
The tone of an amplified guitar is 90% the pickups and electronics. No standard acoustic pick up is going to have the same timbre. Not that an amped acoustic isn't cool , but the timbre isn't even close IME
 
For those of you who play both, what are you getting from your electric that you can't get with your acoustic + effects pedals?
For me, everything is about variation of sounds. I've been utilizing electrics on an acoustic more or less since I started recording 28 years ago. I've had an acoustic 12 string with a pick up fitted since '99 and I like the sound of it plugged straight in as well as put through various pedals on various settings ~ unlike my electro-acoustic 6 string which sounds utterly awful when not used as an acoustic. That said, sometimes I have used it as a kind of "electric" for variation. I bought an electric 12 string last year and it's cool but it's not the same as the electric sound I get from the acoustic 12 with the pick up so straight away, there are at least two distinctive 12 string electric sounds I can utilize.
When I talk of variation, that's a recognition that there is also variety in an electric guitar and there are many things my electric 6 and 12 strings do or rather, sounds I can get, that no pedal wizardry is going to bring to my acoustics.
They're all valid and they all come out to play at some point in their lives.
 
Overdrive and distortion on an acoustic typically sounds like sh!t. Unless you use a soundhole magnetic pickup, the actual 'tone' you get is totally different from an acoustic to an electric. You'll never get the sustain or feedback control from an acoustic that you can from an electric.
 
Different horses for different courses!

I've got electrics that are different sounding (strat vs tele vs LP vs semi). They don't sound the same at all. My acoustics sound different, and play different. I've played them through my pedalboard (that's where my tuner sits), and thru my Princeton clone . There's no way it sounds anything close to my Strat or my H535.

You might as well ask a horn player "why have a trumpet, flugelhorn and cornet?"
 
For those of you who play both, what are you getting from your electric that you can't get with your acoustic + effects pedals?

You can electrically control the ATTACK.

Where the acoustic will not be as racey.

Say speed, and fret range too. Show me something with like 30 usable frets please.

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My acoustic has higher action, heavier strings and sounds like an acoustic. I can plug it in and it sounds vaguely like an acoustic and I can play it like an acoustic. My electrics are easier to play, tire my fingers less, sustain more and sound like electrics. One is even semi-acoustic and comes in half way - not quite so easy to play and not quite so loud, unplugged. Acoustics through effects and gizmos are like old cars with big exhausts, with lights and lowered suspension - what's the point?
 
what's the point?

Right. man, we got bombs and tanks. Lets just fight for battle field superiority. Celebrate the victories with honor and remember those that were sacrificed to win. There is enough time left on the doomsady clock to do it right. Come on ONE MORE TIME... All it takes...One more time.



RAR!
 
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Acoustics through effects and gizmos are like old cars with big exhausts, with lights and lowered suspension - what's the point?
There was a time when necessity was the mother of invention in music recording. So in the studio, artists, producers and engineers did what seemed at the time to be ridiculous things to get certain results. I mean, close miking the bass drum was once forbidden, turning the amp up to distortion was a "studio jailable" offence !
But oddly, the actual sounds produced were quite likeable. And so actual practices or gizmos were created to fulfill humanity's desire for frontier pushing sounds and the necessity to experiment with stupidness was lost.
Yet for some people, the gizmos never sounded as good as the original stupidness and some of those people stuck with the stupid.
My question is not "what's the point," rather, it's "why should you care if you have no intention of doing it ?"
 
Such a negative Nancy. It is great if some guy adds delay and chorus or other FX and makes his acoustic sound cool. Distortion or mild breakup. Hell Ill put it through a vocoder. How you like that?

Perhaps you're only hating. Open up.

'Be the ball'
 
Nope - I'm a traditionalist. My double bass gets a mic, the pickup sound I just hate. I have 5 and 6 string basses and I would never play a chord on them, just not me. My 6 strings have never had a drop D in their lives. I know I could add all the gizmos, and do all kinds of stuff, but I don't, and won't. I have a Fender pedal steel in C9, and I could try alternate tunings, but I won't. I also wear the finger picks backwards - no idea why.
 
If that's hate it's a very passive understated hate.
You could be forgiven for misinterpreting it as a personal preference. :laughings:
 
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