Acoustic pedalboard - with acoustic distortion content!

4114Effects

Hi guys, just thought I'd show off the mini pedalboard I've made for gigs where I only take my acoustic along. I play some rhythm guitar most Sunday mornings and songs can vary greatly from one to the next - one minute it will be a rock style, the next something laid back and open that needs a little texture. The acoustic on it's own just wasn't cutting it - so here's what I've come up with. Apologies for the bad picture, just snapped it on my cameraphone.

White box is a preamp/booster.

Blue is a 5 knob compressor so I can get the compression just right for acoustic (knobs have been replaced now!). 

Then it goes into the silver box - an aural exciter - based on the BBE Sonic Stomp technology, then an active parallel effects loop with mix and phase control. The aural exciter is always on - it really gives the acoustic some prescence, body and zing. 

The effects loop contains a BOSS CE2 clone, and a tubescreamer style overdrive, with an added cabinet simulator circuit - we all know how horrific overdrive sounds straight into a PA ... Anybody else got experience using overdrive/distortion with acoustic? I've got a reasonable tone in the mix, it could maybe better, but then maybe I'm expecting too much! I run these effects in the loop so no matter what effect I use, I always retain a good portion of the base acoustic tone. Finally it's in to a analogue delay then a good old Behringer DI and out to the PA. 

Any suggestions on what else might work on there? Maybe a reverb? I was toying with the idea of adding a reverb with shimmer - any experience of this on acoustic?

Cheers if you've made it this far through my ramblings ...

ThePrettyDamned

I think matt Bellamy from muse uses a distortion on his acoustic for city of delusion live.

Also, Mr cobain used one on nirvana unplugged, but it had a regular pickup on the acoustic, across the sound hole iirc.

So it can be done! Not sure what pedals, though.

ICBM

I've used distortion on an acoustic, both into a guitar amp and into the PA - both with and without speaker emulation. If you don't use emulation you have to be prepared to radically EQ it and still not expect it to sound anything like conventional electric guitar distortion - think more Lindsey Buckingham or Mike Oldfield.

Magnetic soundhole pickup systems sound much better distorted than piezo, and are less feedback-prone - although it will still be an issue. Ideally you have both on the same guitar so you can split the signal and put the magnetic through the distortion and into a guitar amp or a separate channel on the PA from the piezo which is your clean sound, so you can EQ them differently.

I originally used a Taylor 312CE with the older Fishman piezo electrics and an added Rare Earth magnetic soundhole pickup. Even then I found feedback such a problem that I eventually got a semi-solid acoustic-electric Tele instead. (Which I probably shouldn't have sold, but I hated the neck on it.) I now use a Rickenbacker semi-solid electric guitar as an 'electro-acoustic', with one pickup DI'd for the 'acoustic' sound and the other through electric guitar effects. Cheating, I know - but it still sounds surprisingly acoustic like that.

Kurt Cobain's guitar was an original Martin D-18E electrified acoustic - factory-made like that!