Please explain to me the difference between "acoustic" and electric amps

chilipeppermaniac

chilipeppermaniac

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I have always been curious as to why there are "acoustic" amps that must have some advantage over the likes of Marshall, Vox, Fender Twins, etc and hence make them the go to for those playing amplified acoustic guitars.

Please post the rationale and why this is so.
 
marketing........so you buy both.........you need a bass amp and another for your keyboard....and electric drums....and////// then the P.A>,. and ---
 
All amps colour the sound i.e. certain frequencies are amplified more than others, some distortion may be introduced, etc.. Acoustic amps generally colour the sound less than electric amps. This can be good or bad depending on the guitar, the pickups installed in the guitar, and the speaker(s) you are using. I have an old 1955 military PA amp that colours the sound a lot. It is great for playing blues and some rock. Even though it colours the sound a lot it sounds great, very bluesy, with some acoustics. It all depends on what type of sound you are going for.
 
That's right it all depends the sound your looking for. I play Rock and Blues. I am not one that uses much distortion, I have an Orange amp for clean and distortion. One thing I found out this past week running my Godin Progression Strat through a Fishman loud box mini 60 watts an Acoustic amp. The cleans are excellent, Bass and midrange very good. When I hit the HDR switch to make the pick ups active, it really brought things to life. Yes it will depend on the type of guitar you play. I like to play mostly clean, and this amp will take some pedals as well. I am impressed with the Fishman and will be purchasing one shortly.
 
DonP said:
That is one aspect of them I don't like. I really hate Clapton's acoustic tone.
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Agreed. Some, like the Riveras, have the ability to defeat the HF driver. That's something I would personally employ.
 
the inputs for the acoustic amps are set for the pickup types that are used on acoustic guitars. At least that how my Trace Elliot TA35CR is.
 
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ChasFred said:
the inputs for the acoustic amps are set for the pickup types that are used on acoustic guitars. At least that how my Trace Elliot TA35CR is.
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This is a good point. Some acoustic guitars with passive piezo pickups sound terrible plugged in because of an impedance mismatch with the amp's input. Acoustic amps can usually handle this or you can go through an active direct input device which has an active preamp. I use an LR Baggs Venue DI with my acoustics. It has a four band equalizer and notch filters so I can pretty much shape my acoustic tone to work with any amp or PA. Some people use a small acoustic amp for this purpose. You go from the acoustic guitar to the acoustic amp then from the acoustic amp into the PA system. This way the acoustic amp does the impedance matching and also doubles as a stage monitor so you can hear what you are playing.
 
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I like coming here.
I learn some interesting things with a few laughs along the way.
 
My impetus for asking is my blind friend telling me he got a new Hartke acoustic amp. The only acoustic amps I ever saw were Fenders
 
I have no experience with the Hartke, so I can’t comment on that.

I can say I did like the sound of my friend’s acoustic guitar through his keyboard amp. It was a smooth, even sound that didn’t sound honkish or spikey.
 
Acoustic style amps have a much wider frequency response. More HiFi. One of the reasons for a different speaker setup. A lot of them have the ability to produce decent vocals, too, while adding your instrument at the same time.
 
I install a FET preamp in my ODS builds works great look at the far right front on the chassis side.

100 watt low plate classic 2008 001.JPG
 
A Fet is a good choice. Back in he day I could only get bipolar at a reasonable price, so I bootstrapped the base bias to get a reasonably high impedance - nowhere near FET level though.
 
I built this amp for a famous guitarist that plays acoustic guitar 90% of the time now. Valve 1 is a low plate 100k Mepco/Electra 1 watt 1% with a 1.5k bias x2

Custom build 50 watt 001.JPG
 
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