ACOUSTIC VS ELECTRIC GUITAR AMPS – DO YOU NEED BOTH?
You already know what a guitar amplifier is. But did you know that there are different types of amps for electric and acoustic guitars? Want to know why? Read on.
ELECTRIC GUITAR AMPS
If you want to make your electric guitar sound like an electric guitar, then having a good amp is about as important as the instrument itself. It’s the amp that takes your clean guitar signal and changes it into the treble-heavy, compressed, and saturated sound that we all know and love.
Electric guitar amplifiers come in a huge range of shapes and sizes and can make use of various technologies – but whether it’s a tube, solid-state, or hybrid guitar amp, the principles are the same.
All these amplifiers are designed to work specifically with the magnetic pickups of an electric guitar.
They produce a tone with a more focused mid-range and reduced definition at the high end. This is largely because overdriven guitar tones feature a lot of harmonic content at the top end of the audible frequency spectrum.
A completely faithful representation of these sounds isn’t massively pleasant to listen to – so the speakers have a mid-ranged focus and roll off the highs.
In essence, these changes cause electric guitar amplifiers to add colour to the signals coming through them.
ACOUSTIC GUITAR AMPS
In contrast, an acoustic guitar amplifier aims to reproduce the exact sound of the instrument as faithfully as possible.
Designed to work with the piezo pickups of your electro acoustic (or even with a microphone), these amplifiers have a blank, uncoloured sound with a flat frequency response. This allows them to recreate the subtleties of your instrument’s tone.
They’ll often include a tweeter in addition to the main speaker cone, providing extra fidelity in the high frequency range.
These amps are actually very similar to PA speakers, which are also designed to amplify signals without adding any tonal colour. In fact, acoustic players will often plug straight into a venue’s mixing desk or PA system. However, acoustic guitar amps come with specifically guitarist-friendly features such as built-in effects, equalisation controls, and effects loops.
Many of them also have multiple inputs, allowing you to plug in a microphone and aux cord alongside your guitar. This is perfect for solo musicians who want to control everything from the stage or buskers who need the convenience of having everything in one place
ELECTRIC GUITAR, ACOUSTIC AMP
Plugging your electric guitar into an acoustic amplifier will give you a very clean, dead-sounding tone – especially if you’re using a solid-body, as you’ll have basically no sustain whatsoever. Imagine the sound you get when you DI your guitar. That’s the sound you’ll get from an acoustic amp.
Once again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for styles like jazz which require a clear tone, and hollowbody players who keep it clean might find that the increased fidelity at the high end is exactly what they’ve been looking for.
However, if you use effects like distortion and overdrive, there’ll be a lot of unpleasant high-frequency content. And if you’re playing with a band, you’ll struggle to cut through the mix due to the flat frequency response at the end of the signal chain.