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 ...
Comments
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.
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