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Joined:
January 2008
Posts: 36
Location: San Fernando, CA | Hello all:
I'm trying to get an amp that would accommodate both accoustic and electric guitars. I went to GC the other day and I tried both Ovation and an Gibson LP guitars on a Fishman Loudbox 100 and the clean sounds excellent on this little amp.
I guess I can add the effects box if I wanted to. Any idea if this would work?
Regards,
Charles |
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Joined:
December 2006
Posts: 6996
Location: Jet City | I don't know of any that do a good job at both. I'd be worried about blowin' that speaker blastin an electric with distortion through it.
I could be wrong though. |
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Joined:
March 2007
Posts: 665
Location: Tychy, Poland | buy a Line6 Flextone III XL or plus - depends on how loud you want to play. Plugged into PA on clean program it sounds just like acoustic amp. When you play using internal speakers it still sounds good, but it cuts off a bit of "highs". when i was looking for amp i've tested few marshall, fender, carvin and Crate amps, and none of them sounded half as good with acoustic guitar plugged in.
I think the only problem might be a price - $700 amp + $300 for FBV Shortboard (a must) |
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Joined:
June 2006
Posts: 7307
Location: South of most, North of few | This may sound crazy (as most of my escapades do) but try a good keyboard amp. I have a Behringer 180 watt keyboard amp, and it sounds decent with acoustic. I'm sure you can't hurt it with electric either as it has an excellent range to accommodate a keyboard. I use it primarily to play my electronic drums through, and that is tough on any amp. It also has a lot of effects on it, and didn't cost a bundle. I think I paid somewhere around 250.00 new. |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | As far as I'm aware there is only one amp on the market designed to do both jobs, which is the Riviera Sedona. It comes in 3 or 4 versions but what they all have in common is that there are completely diffferent preamp sections for electric and acoustic sides, plus in addition to the main speaker there is an HF horn which can be switched in or out depending on whether you are using an electric or acoustic guitar. Not cheap, but cheap never gets it done right.
All other amps designed for electric guitars, including the Line 6 Flextone and similar, will present serious tonal compromises when used with an acoustic guitar, because neither their preamps or speakers are voiced for the flat, wide frequency response required to accurately reproduce an acoustic guitar
One solution is to use an acoustic amp, keyboard amp or full-range active PA speaker plus a small mixer. Any of these 3 will handle acoustic instuments. For electric guitar add a digital amp modeller such as a Line 6 Pod or any of the many others on the market, such as the new SansAmp Character pedals. |
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Joined:
March 2007
Posts: 665
Location: Tychy, Poland | Paul, i own flextone and with proper programming you can set it flat and there won't be any disortions. sure - with internal speaker sound will not be as good as on acoustic amp, but i've plugged it into PA through XLR's with my program based on Line6 super-clean model and it sounded great. i can plug my Legend into Flex, and record some samples (i will connect flex throught XLR's to mixer, then to soundcard, and i won't add any effects) when i'll come home. |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | It dependes what you want to hear, and what your priorities are. I'm more than familiar with the Flextone, and the rest of the Line 6 stuff and it just doesn't do it for me for acoustic instruments. I can get an almost acceptable tone by using the cleaner models such as the JC120. But the JC120 was used as an acoustic amp back in the day because there was nothing else. I wouldn't use a real JC120 now, so I certainly don't want to be playing though a "model" of one, or a model of any other electric guitar amp, unless I'm playing an electric guitar.
The only way to get an acceptable sound from an electric guitar amp modeller is, as you said, to take the speaker out of the equation. Which means it is no longer an amplifier, but has effectivey become just a preamplifier. And there are preamps on ther market specifically for acoustic instruments which will do a better job without the expense of a speaker enclosure. |
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Joined:
March 2007
Posts: 665
Location: Tychy, Poland | yes, but it goes the other way too - if you buy acoustic amp and play (even using multieffect) on electric guitar, you won't get good sound no matter how expensive acoustic amp is, especially when it comes to disorted sound.
my first idea when i was looking for amp last summer was to buy AER 60 compact & multieffect, then i've tried Roland AC-60, Marshall AS-50D etc. and none of them sounded good when playing with overdrive. they were all too bright and they didn't provide enough amount on the bass side.
i haven't seen anything like Riviera You mentoined earlier, so i went for Flextone because it was optimal choice at the time. |
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Joined:
January 2006
Posts: 5881
Location: Colorado Rocky Mountains | On stage, Kaki King uses a Fender tube amp with her assortment of pedals, then switches back and forth between her acoustic and electric guitars. Of course, her sound is relatively unique. Although I personally have never bought into the one size fits all theory and use specialty amps for everything dpending upon need, is it possible to start with a good clean tube amp and then customize the tone with effects and modelers? Speaking of speciality amps, the amp I'm most crazed about right now is the Genz Acoustic Pro. It not only sounds wonderful, but it looks so cool with its blue preamp tube glowing through the amp face grill. |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | Originally posted by LBJ:
yes, but it goes the other way too - if you buy acoustic amp and play (even using multieffect) on electric guitar, you won't get good sound no matter how expensive acoustic amp is, especially when it comes to disorted sound.
Exactly. You need an amp for each application. You can make do with a single amp for both but there will always be compromises.
When I play lap steel with my band I go through a Boss Fender Deluxe Reverb Amp modeller pedal which goes through my acoustic rig and ends up at whatever PA we are using. Does it sound like a Deluxe Reverb amp? No. Am I totally happy with the sound? No and I'm looking at alternatives. Is it good enough? Almost, but not quite. Do I want to be a purist and lug a "real" amp around and screw up the stage mix with a bunch of acoustic instruments? Absolutely not, because it's not that crucial to me or to the sound of the band. My acoustic tone is crucial and I make no compromises there. |
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Joined:
May 2003
Posts: 4389
Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | How much do you want to spend? Where will you be playing?
If money's not an issue get one those bose tower systems and a line 6 podxt.
If money's important, get a keyboard amp, and then, for electric, run a pedal or line 6 pod in front of it. Pedal combo would be Boss Blues Driver and a Digitech Reverb. When run as an acoustic amp, use a self powered multi mixer like an Alesis 6FX, in front.
If your just getting your amp collection together, you'll need four:
1)Hog 30 keyboard / bass combo
2)5 watt tube combo like an epiphone, fender or blackheart
3)Studio monitor powered speaker, like a yamaha MS101
4)A 30Watt solid state combo, like a yamaha jx30
PT's right on the money though, if you want to get the best sound, get one thing designed for an acoustic, say a genz benz shenedoah junior, and a VOX30 tube amp for electric. |
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Joined:
April 2004
Posts: 13303
Location: Latitude 39.56819, Longitude -105.080066 | If money is not an object, do as Paul suggested and look at the Riviera Sedona series. Problem solved. |
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Joined:
January 2008
Posts: 36
Location: San Fernando, CA | Wow ! I have learned a lot about amp here. Thank you all for the input. This is awesome to find out so much information about almost anything here.
Thank you all indeed.
Regards,
Charles |
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Joined:
March 2004
Posts: 86
Location: Detroit area | I don't know if this will help you or not, but I run my acoustics through a Boss GT8 processor, set to the "warm clean" preamp (models a JC120, only a little softer). It really magnifies all the great tone from the Ovation, both the OP-Pro and the standard "stack" volume/tone jobby on my '79. |
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Joined:
December 2006
Posts: 6996
Location: Jet City | an4340, I had that same thought last night about the Bose system. It is a spendy solution, but also can handle the vocals, so in the long run may even be more cost efficient.
Paul sounds like he has a good one there too, but I wouldn't know. Rivieras are beyond my means too.
I still think that it's best to have one for each, heck, unless you're going with modeld sounds on the electric, I personally think there's a good argument to have several different amps.
I spose it's depending on what you're doing. Recording, gigging, sitting in your basement for fun.... |
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Joined:
October 2005
Posts: 4081
Location: Utah | Not cheap, but cheap never gets it done right. That's the same exact thing a certain Governor just said. |
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Amp question...