# What is an acoustic amp?



## Mahogany Martin (Mar 2, 2006)

What are the characteristics that define an amp built for an acoustic guitar? Will playing an acoustic guitar with a built-in pre-amp on a*regular* amp cause damage in a long run? What if you turn up the volume (of the pre-amp on the guitar) to "11" and get a little bit of dirt?


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## Telemark (Feb 9, 2006)

well I won't answer your questions, but I will say I saw Zubot and Dawson with Jim Byrnes and they used YCV-50's and a YCV-80 ( Jim)

Accoustic guitrars, fiddle, mandolins steel guitar, all through these amps.

Sounded Damn good too!

Mark.


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## Mahogany Martin (Mar 2, 2006)

Thanks for your reply Telemark. This is kinda what I'm after. See the Yorkville is a tube amp, and if these guys are playing acoutic instruments in the true *acoustic* sense, then they probably keep the guitar volume fairly low (or let's say at 5) and crank the amp up so that they get a nice acoustic sound. To keep this short and to the point, is an acoustic amp better as a solid state amp? Better for lack of better word since that you are not really using tubes, you're not really driving the amp with a high volume on the guitar). Hope you pros all know where I'm trying to go with this...


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## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

...i highly recommend plugging your acoustic instrument into an amp designed for that purpose. the improvement (over using an electric guitar amp) is dramatic.

the other option, of course, is an acoutic preamp fed into the sound system.

-dh


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## Jeff Flowerday (Jan 23, 2006)

I'll add my .02

An acoustic amp is about clean head room, you don't want it breaking up. Next it's about accurate representation of the signal it's being fed, it shouldn't color at all.

I'm with David on the electric amp thing, they don't do acoustics justice.


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## Telemark (Feb 9, 2006)

I also prefer accoustic amps, just thought I would share an experience
Zubot and dawson sounded pretty damn good - Soft seat theatre house sound system, 

The Eletric amps have a voice that will colour your instruments sound, if that works for your great.

In my band one player uses his acoustic with Wah Wah thru a fender blues 
deluxe, sometimes it's fantastic other times its ok.

I also saw Willie P Bennet with mandolin thru some old Tube Rig that was :rockon2: the real deal! smooth and meaty and toneful.


Mark.


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## Wild Bill (May 3, 2006)

*Willie's the best!*



Telemark said:


> I also prefer accoustic amps, just thought I would share an experience
> Zubot and dawson sounded pretty damn good - Soft seat theatre house sound system,
> 
> The Eletric amps have a voice that will colour your instruments sound, if that works for your great.
> ...


Glad you liked his tone, Mark! I'm probably the guy who worked on the amp you heard!

If it was his Silvertone sitting on a 2-12 cab no wonder you liked the sound of his mandolin. A couple of weeks ago he had just got back from the west coast with an old Kent amp from '57 he had picked up from who knows where. I went over it and fixed a few things (like the tremolo) and he intended to run it "stereo" on the opposite side of the stage. It feeds a 1-15" cab and it too has a vintage tone.

However, the other guys are quite right in that a guitar amp will colour the sound of an acoustic instrument. This is because the actual circuitry is different. 

Electric guitar is supposed to have some degree of distortion, even for most "clean" jazz. If you want to keep an acoustic instrument sounding as acoustic as possible you want an amp designed to be as clean and "hifi" as possible.

It doesn't matter a whit if the amp uses tubes or transistors. It's all in the circuitry. Acoustic amps are really more like PA amps with the centre points of the tone controls adjusted to be more useful in the frequency range of an acoustic instrument than a human voice through a microphone.


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## Telemark (Feb 9, 2006)

Wild Bill said:


> Glad you liked his tone, Mark! I'm probably the guy who worked on the amp you heard!
> 
> If it was his Silvertone sitting on a 2-12 cab no wonder you liked the sound of his mandolin. ....



Yah that was the one. That nite made me want to fix up my YBA and get a decent cab for it.

Fred Eaglesmith Willie and the Band in a little dive pub in Pub full of exhausted Fredheads that were doing the train ride thru the rockies.:food-smiley-015: priceless.


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## fireball26er (Oct 8, 2006)

*acoustic amps*

although you can use a "normal" amp with a pre amp for the acoustic the best thing to do is just buy a acoustic amp even though they are expensive. Just a word of advice if you plan on using the guitar on a tage or something where you are playing for people plug the guitar into a PA system. It may sound like a weird idea but they acoustics will actually sound the best through that.


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## aaron (Mar 6, 2006)

I have a sweet little Kustom 35 acoustic amp and wouldnt play through anything else.The "headroom" is amazing and the difference in sound quality since I started playing my acoustic gear through it, has been jaw dropping.I don't know what makes acoustic amp's so much better,but a good one will change everything.


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## PaulS (Feb 27, 2006)

What kind of sound are you looking for from your acoustic? If you want pure sweet acoustic sound then the acoustic amps are the way to go, a friend has a SWR and it is fantastic. I've also seen guys playing acoustic more like an electric, through a fender tube amp and a fully armed pedal board in front of them. There is a guy out of texas, Monte Montgomery who uses this approach and he has some awesome sounds and tones going on. SRV and Hendrix with an acoustic..... lol. The SWR has a built in aural exciter which seems to work real well. They are also available as stomp boxes. In the past I used my acoustic into a Yamaha Acoustic Stomp pedal into a Tech 21 power engine with great results.


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## washburned (Oct 13, 2006)

*Legendary advice*

I remember reading an article years ago where Steve Stiils talked about sound engineers wanting to put pickups etc. in the sound hole of his Martin D45s: he said something along the lines of 'I didn't pay $40 000 to have some ***** run up and stick a $50 piece of plastic in the sound hole. His job is to capture the sound of that guitar'.... I guess I don't see the sense of fiddlin with the sound of an acoustic instrument either.

That being said, I recently heard a young gentleman named Slick Ballinger, who plays the most delicious up tempo blues/gospel, and whose guitar sounded absolutely fantastic - he was playing a newer Fender acoustic through a Blues Deville. Plays big heavy strings (14s) with metal finger picks and a brass slide.


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