Acoustic amps.

domvac

New member
I regularly cruise the Kijiji/ebay sites just to check out guitars and equipment and I have a question for all you who know about such things.
I'm seeing a lot of small amps for sale and some are listed as "acoustic" amps. I was wondering what is the difference between an acoustic amp versus an electric guitar amp. I would expect that an amp is an amp. I have use my Roland JC120 with the piezo on my acoustic and it works fine for many situations but I prefer going through the p.a. system to that option.

Is an acoustic amp different than a standard electric amp?
I understand that speakers are designed for specific frequency responses and one can tailor the speaker the same way you can a guitar pickup to achieve a certain sound.

Is the circuitry different for the acoustic amp?

Whatup?
 
Often, an 'acoustic' amp will have no inherent distortion available from its circuits, giving a crappy electric guitar sound. Don't buy an amp for its name, buy it for its sound.
 
I would never buy anything for other than its' sound. I just haven't shopped for an amp in a very long time. I assumed that an acoustic amp would be without any distortion or overdrive circuitry but would still offer reverb, chorus and delay effects. I just find it interesting that there seems to be a lot of acoustic amps being offered these days and I was curious if they had a significant difference from a regular guitar amp.

I'm not buying anything, I just wanted to know what might be different between the two. You never know until you ask.

Thanks
 
I'm kind of guessing here, but I think the big difference between an acoustic amp and an electric guitar amp is in the tone. An amp for an electric guitar is going to boost the mid-freq range, while an acoustic amp will be much more flatter to bring out the natural tones of the acoustic guitar.
 
FWIW from my experience
Have the Roland AC30, it gets good rep but I don't like the tone at all. Tried to fix it with eq, even measured it to see if I could pin it down. no luck. It sits until I can off it.
Two fellows with Genz Benz seem real nice both on the guitar' and up on a stick mic/pa thing.
I landed on the three-way Fishman Loudbox Performer after experimenting with a few 'high(er)fi cabs.
Seems a fairly neutral speaker system does help a lot.
 
My Taylor 314 CE sounded great through the clean channel on my Mesa Nomad 55...it had 1-12" Celestion Black Shadow and I ran 6L6s instead of EL 84s..................




just sayin'............
 
People all over do the piezo pick up thing -and the tweeters in the amps for that matter and call it good to go. One of the things I found in my search was one of the Fishman's top' controls rolled off intirely was an 'improvemnt'. So tone of a single 12", yeah I could see that too.
 
most of the 'acoustic' amps I see have small speakers by guitar amp standards ....... usually 5 or 6 inch for the woofers.
I suppose that's to help control the boominess you get with acoustics on stage.
 
The differences between a "regular" electric guitar amp and an "acoustic guitar amp" can be fairly disimilar.

For example an acoustic guitar amp is more like a PA. I does not have a distortion channel, they tend to be solid state, and the speakers are designed more like a PA or bass amp speaker, i.e. not to distort. You wont get much if any break up, and if you do it wont be the kind you want.

For example I have a Carvin AG100D acoustic amp. It sports 100w through a single 12" and tweeter. It was designed for the singer/sonwriter or coffee shop gig, having 3 independant channels that are all set up a little different. One is even designed for vox with an XLR input. There are even a pair of effects processors that can be assigned to any of the channels with a simple blend control. The effects aren't the greatest but they do the job nicely.


If you need to there is even a dimmer control to take out the tweeter. Even though it is a combo amp, the internal speaker is connected via standard 1/4" to 1/4" cable, so you could plug it into a halfstack if you really wanted to.

I've used this in a small coffee shop trio with vox/guitar + bass with a friend playing a djembe on the side (not through the amp)

An acoustic amp can recreate that crisp and clean sound of your steel string acoustic and vocals far better than your Marshall stack,

I hope this helps in some way. :thumbs up:
 
People all over do the piezo pick up thing -and the tweeters in the amps for that matter and call it good to go. One of the things I found in my search was one of the Fishman's top' controls rolled off intirely was an 'improvemnt'. So tone of a single 12", yeah I could see that too.

actually the onboard Fishman is a Prefix plus so it has a mic and piezo and the ability to blend the two.....it also made recording direct decent.......
 
Often, an 'acoustic' amp will have no inherent distortion available from its circuits, giving a crappy electric guitar sound. Don't buy an amp for its name, buy it for its sound.

Yes, a non dirty channel amp. But do everyone a favor and do not amplify your acoustic, DI it. Only buy an acoustic amp if you cannot get your bandmates to control their volume.
 
actually the onboard Fishman is a Prefix plus so it has a mic and piezo and the ability to blend the two.....it also made recording direct decent.......

I worked with a guy that played an 8 string guitar with four tranducers in it. Guy was a monster player, but the low end was so overwhelming I never used the first transducer. Two tranducers went to an amp I could not control. So live wise it was hectic to say the least, I basically could only add treble at that point. You need to ask yourself, is the acoustic guitar more important than the electric player, generally the acoustic lays a foundation with the rhythm section, so amplification makes no sense other than to keep up with them, but in a live situation you created more problems because of another sound source facing the audience, competing with PA. Buy a 100$ countryman or 200 radian and shoot it down the snake to give your soundman a chance. Fold back that DI signal to monitors, so only YOU hear it. Also, Don't buy a Baggs or fishman pre. Buy a new guitar that sounds better. One semi parametric mid band is better than that 7 band on the baggs or the 3 band on a fishman. This is my opinion.
 
Interesting discussion. I recently installed a Fishman Piezo bridge on my Tele. It was a decent acoustic sound but lacked that sound I was hoping for. It came with a stereo jack that I could plug the cord in one position for the acoustic or plug in all the way to get the magnetics but not both together so, I ordered the preamp and that made a huge difference. I can blend both acoustic and magnetic or use either separately and the piezo has the full acoustic sound that I was expecting in the first place. I use this guitar with a Line 6 75 watt with a 12" Celestion and it sounds great and even better through the p.a.
My original question was just for curiosity sake. I'm not looking to buy a new amp, I just wasn't sure what the difference between the amps might be. I had my suspicions that it was in the effects and frequency response, but I wasn't sure so I thought I'd ask.
Thanks for the feedback.
Play on!
 
Good acoustic amps are super clean ... ie, they don't color the sound of the instrument. Guitar amps are all about color. Acoustic amps might include feedback filters of some sort. They usually have at least one XLR (or combination) input, often two on multichannel amps. In a band situation an acoustic amp usually isn't needed if you've got a decent guitar amp. The finer elements of acoustic tone are lost in the band mix, anyway.
 
Interesting discussion. I recently installed a Fishman Piezo bridge on my Tele. It was a decent acoustic sound but lacked that sound I was hoping for. It came with a stereo jack that I could plug the cord in one position for the acoustic or plug in all the way to get the magnetics but not both together so, I ordered the preamp and that made a huge difference. I can blend both acoustic and magnetic or use either separately and the piezo has the full acoustic sound that I was expecting in the first place. I use this guitar with a Line 6 75 watt with a 12" Celestion and it sounds great and even better through the p.a.
My original question was just for curiosity sake. I'm not looking to buy a new amp, I just wasn't sure what the difference between the amps might be. I had my suspicions that it was in the effects and frequency response, but I wasn't sure so I thought I'd ask.
Thanks for the feedback.
Play on!


I was using my Fender CD140SCE (with Fishman system) through my Line 6 Spider IV 75 in the tribute band (until we broke up). Good clean acoustic sound with enough volume for rehearsals (we didn't use PA speakers during practice at all, just in-ear monitors). For live use, all amps were miced. For huge PA/pro or solo/acoustic act use, DIing acoustic guitar is definitely the right choice, but necessarily for band use
 
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