Aoustic Electric-->Woody-->PA AMP?

[Arn C.]

Howdy All ,
    Would this work ok?  Would I have more control over the tone?  Or should I run directly to eq then to pa amp?  
    My guitar has  a built in eq, but I can't really get the sounds  out of it that I want.   Maybe I could mod the eq circuit in my guitar?

Any suggestions?

Peace!
Arn C.

[Mark Hammer]

The PA may assume a lower output impedance than the Woody provides (although, to be truthful, I couldn't tell you what the Woody's output impedance is), so maybe something needs to go in between the Woody and PA.

The lowpass filter section included in the Woody is probably unnecessary in your case, since you have an already acoustic sound source and alsom have on-board EQ-ing.  The exciter section, though, may help to give you a little more punch.  Because the guitar pre-amp's output may be hotter than a regular guitar's, the trimpot in the exciter section might easily be reduced to 100k or 250k since you won't need that much additional gain to produce the clipping.  That might also help achieve a better S/N ratio.

The highpass filter's corner frequency can also be tinkered with to suit your instrument and needs, by changing the values of C7/8/9.  I imagine that raising the corner frequency will make it add a little more "satiny sheen" than "sparkle".  Note as well that raising the corner frequency ahead of the clipping stage usually necessitates increasing the gain of the clipping stage a little to compensate for the small drop in signal amplitude.  Of course at the range of lower and middle range harmonics, that drop likely won't be huge.

I think something like the MOSFet booster would make a fine link between the pedal and a PA amp, both in terms of being able to produce the needed signal level (line, I assume), and in terms of providing suitable impedance-matching.

[Arn C.]

Thanks Mark for the insight and information.   I will take this into consideration.
Do you think I could take my eq in my guitar out and maybe tweak it for enhanced performance?
Maybe this is all I need to do?   I will take it out and draw it out and maybe I can get some input on how to make it sound better than it does.

Thanks again for your help!
Arn C.

[Mark Hammer]

Personally, I wouldn't hold out hope of tinkering productively with the on-board pre-amp.  My sense is that these things are designed around preserving battery life, since one always risks cosmetic damage whenever a battery has to be changed, not to mention the role of battery life in customer satisfaction.  Besides, there is a pretty good chance you'll face SMT components once inside anyways, which will be tricky to mod.  This is all just a guess on my part, though.

[Arn C.]

Mark,
   Unfortunately, that does make a lot of sense!  I do have an old self-powered equalizer that has about 7 bands(I am guessing from memory) that I may give a try.  It has all knobs(red) on the front of it, no sliders.  Old!    It may give it the flavor I am looking for and maybe not.  if not, I will give your suggestions a try!
Thanks Much!
Arn C.

[PeterJ]

We always use direct boxes and mic cables between acoustics and the PA -- we get poor results otherwise. We also use clean boosts for solos (either a micro-amp or a DOD Bi-Fet preamp).


Peter