Clean boost for acoustic guitar?

[lmacmil]

Went to my first acoustic open mic last week.  My guitar has a K&K Pure Western Mini which consists of 3 transducers mounted on the bridge plate inside the guitar.  It is totally passive and works great plugged directly into my mixer at home. 

At the bar, I plugged directly into the mixer and had to turn the volume up quite a bit which resulted in a loud hum (maybe from the spotlights but who knows).  My friend's guitar had a Baggs active pickup so his was fine.  Wondering if a clean boost might solve this problem.  I have an AMZ Mosfet booster that I built a couple years ago.  As soon as I get it working again ( ) I will give it a try.  (Worked last time I used it a couple years ago but not last week when I tried it again.)

If I have to, I can buy an acoustic guitar preamp (K&K has one) but since I don't know how often I'll be doing the open mics, I'd rather not spend the money.

Thanks.

[aziltz]

any kind of preamp tailored for acoustic guitar will help you out.  Acoustic-focused pedals don't pop up on here much so I have nothing to suggest.  Perhaps others will chime in.

[Gus]

Maybe try the Fet impedance converter circuit.
http://web.telia.com/~u31617586/#simple%20FET%20impedance%20converter
Change the 1 meg input resistor to 10 Meg and you should not need the input cap with piezos.  Often you do not need any added gain with piezos but you need a higher input resistance.  You will need a shielded enclosure around the circuit and shielded wire to the circuit.  I would build it so it plugs into the jack on the guitar body or clips to your guitar strap to keep the piezo to JFET buffer cable short

[oldrocker]

The R.O.G. Mr. EQ. worked on my acoustic.  It boosted the guitar with the added bonus of the eq.

[slideman82]

I made a Fet style booster for a friend, who tried it with his acoustic, and sounded great! Just build a Fetzer.

[Renegadrian]

I'd say try the Tillman, it sounds quite good in any situation...Or the Barcus Berry Hot Dot box - it was born to work with BBHD piezo pickups, so it should fit your need, I believe...

[Gus]

I would build/check the circuit I posted,  It is a nice circuit.

[grolschie]

any kind of preamp tailored for acoustic guitar will help you out.  Acoustic-focused pedals don't pop up on here much so I have nothing to suggest.  Perhaps others will chime in.

Piezo pickup? Then +1 on the onboard preamp. I have a piezo/preamp combo and it works pretty well - if you like the piezo sound.

[Ripthorn]

I built the Cafe Walter PZP-1 piezo preamp for the piezo in my bass and it works great.

[jacobyjd]

My suggestion would be a straight up opamp boost. run it on +/- 12 or 18v within the amp's operating specs and you'll get a transparent db boost for running into a board.

[lmacmil]

My suggestion would be a straight up opamp boost.

Fyi, I'm from South Bend and the open mic night I referred to is at the Big Easy in Elkhart.  Just started 3 weeks ago.  It's Thursdays at 8.

[col]

Whatever you build please can you let us know how well it worked. I recently did a gig with my Crafter which has a pre-amp and the other guitarist used a passive Applause. The PA chap wasn't happy at all with the diffrence in volume. I was thinking of just doing a basic op-amp circuit but if there is something better I'd build that.

[jacobyjd]

My suggestion would be a straight up opamp boost.

Fyi, I'm from South Bend and the open mic night I referred to is at the Big Easy in Elkhart.  Just started 3 weeks ago.  It's Thursdays at 8.

Awesome! I might have to check it out that's only a short hop away!