NPD, and a (probably) daft question....

Kalimna

Greetings,
Following on from a previous query, I have now bought myself a soundhole pickup (couldnt quite stretch to the Fishman Rare Earth, so went for the Neo D humbucker - and it sounds fine to me, not a perfect representation of the acoustic tone but does what it does).
As I don't have a dedicated acoustic amp, I have only tried it at home with either my Blackstar TVP or 633 Engineering valve amp.
However I have noticed (on either amp) quite a difference in volume (much lower) from the Fishman compared to plugging in an electric.
Is this to be expected? And would a dedicated acoustic amp keep the volume up?
Anyway, cheers for the advice,

Adam

ICBM

Yes, that's normal. There's less mass of magnetic string material over the pickup (bronze isn't magnetic, so it's just the thin steel cores of the strings that produce the signal) so the amount of electrical energy produced is less to begin with, and acoustic pickups are usually voiced to sacrifice output to give a more naturally mid-scooped tone as well.

An acoustic amp will be designed for that type of output, and since it's not meant to distort you can turn the channel gain up further to compensate as well.

Kalimna

Thanks ICBM, thats pretty much what i figured. Time to hunt out (another!) amp

Cheers,
Adam

ICBM

Kalimna said:

Thanks ICBM, thats pretty much what i figured. Time to hunt out (another!) amp

Or get an acoustic preamp pedal, which will be useful if you ever need to go direct to a PA as well.

Kalimna

Okay. May I then ask, what would you recommend as an acoustic preamp pedal? As you can tell, this is an area I know next to nothing.....

Adam

ICBM

If you're on a budget, something like this would probably do...

https://www.thomann.de/gb/artec_acoustic_outboard_eq.htm?glp=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAtdDTBRArEiwAPT4y-5vRi4FhE_Jl4TYkIQGFfJAdJCuYnGuSUIJmre1n40RsmaYzjsYMbBoCZ3wQAvD_BwE

Better would be something like an LR Baggs Para DI, but that's going to cost more than the Rare Earth would have.

If you're definitely going to be running it mostly into an electric guitar amp, surprisingly a Boss AC-2 (not the newer AC-3) Acoustic Simulator pedal works quite well! I don't really know why since it's not meant for that at all, but it does work... and you can pick them up for around £30-£40.