Acoustic Amp, Electric Guitar


anthm
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Joined: 05/17/20
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anthm
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Joined: 05/17/20
Posts: 66
09/21/2021 10:10 am

Hi all ,

I recently bought a small Sonnett 60 Acoustic amp by Black Star. I sometimes use a Seymour Duncan Woody type pick-up to have some fun.

The Guitar teacher is launching me into the blues structure and rhythms also saying that my months of work getting fluent with pentatonic scales, maybe its time I look at an electric guitar for my beginner type improvising.

The question is, Will I get away with my acoustic amp for a while with a potentially new electric guitar plugged into it?

Is there some sort of device to make it better, Pedal? Pre Amp? Or am I kidding myself?

Thanks in advance

Kind Regards

Anthony (Hong Kong)


# 1
manXcat
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manXcat
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09/21/2021 9:23 pm
Originally Posted by: anthm

The question is, Will I get away with my acoustic amp for a while with a potentially new electric guitar plugged into it?

Is there some sort of device to make it better, Pedal? Pre Amp? Or am I kidding myself?

[p]

G'day Anthony,

Firstly congratulations. Very nice acoustic amp.

[br]To answer your first question, the short answer is yes, [u]expectation dependent[/u]. Your "for a while" interim expectation seems to OK that.

An amp is an amp. It'll just see the output signal from your guitar and amplify it. Of course, Blackstar's Sonnet Series was designed around reproducing tones optimal for acoustic guitar with controls relevant to that and XLR inputs for vocal performing. [br][br]Plug in your electric and it'll be fine, particularly for cleans which are ideal for learning and practice of chords, melody, scales etc. Just don't expect massive metal Marshall tones from it or lots of rock crunch. It has two inbuilt reverb settings and EQ channel shaping x2. Not having read its manual I'm unsure at this point how its High Pass Filter is integrated into it's PCB circuitary and whether it can be effectively disabled by turning its and the Brilliance controls to null?

The Sonnet Series were designed to do a specific job. Even the 60 should make plenty of noise at home at 60W. It has a 6.5" speaker plus a tweeter inside. Think of it as an ersatz half an ID Core 40 with the addition of a Tweeter but without the Crunch, Supercrunch, OD1 & OD2 channels.[br][br]Second question answer. Of course you can use pedals with it. Caveat, I very much doubt they are going to make it sound much like what what it isn't. Although it doesn't have an effects loop, pedals like Chorus, Delay, Compression or Booster should work OK through its inputs. High Gain, Distortion, Fuzz I wouldn't expect too much limited by its config & design implementation. Essentially you'll have to try them and see.

[br]If blues with a bluesy tone is what you'll be wanting primarily from electric I suspect your Sonnet will serve you well enough until you determine exactly which amp you want to go with.

All the best with it.


# 2
anthm
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Joined: 05/17/20
Posts: 66
anthm
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Joined: 05/17/20
Posts: 66
09/21/2021 11:36 pm
Originally Posted by: manXcat

G'day Anthony,

Firstly congratulations. Very nice acoustic amp.

[br]To answer your first question, the short answer is yes, [u]expectation dependent[/u]. Your "for a while" interim expectation seems to OK that.

[br]Second question answer. Of course you can use pedals with it. Caveat, I very much doubt they are going to make it sound much like what what it isn't. Although it doesn't have an effects loop, pedals like Chorus, Delay, Compression or Booster should work OK through its inputs. High Gain, Distortion, Fuzz I wouldn't expect too much limited by its config & design implementation. Essentially you'll have to try them and see.

All the best with it.

Good Morning ManXcat

Mate, what a brilliant reply. Thank you very very much for taking the time to answer my questions in such a succinct way.

Thank you, everything you have stated is understood so far, although I may have some questions down the track about the Brilliance Control, and HP Bypass controls that you mention. I will however try doing some reading about them first. A pre amp is something I have never understood either, I will also put that on my list to read about.

Have a great day and thanks again.

Kind Regards

Anthony


# 3
manXcat
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manXcat
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09/22/2021 12:19 am

You're welcome.

[br]This might assist you in understanding where a guitar amplifer's preamp fits into the amplifcation chain and what it does.

In simplified terms, a pre-amp effectively takes the basic line signal from the instrument and shapes its tonal charateristics before passing it on to the power amp stage where the grunt is added to the signal sent to the speaker/s.

In lay terms, Brilliance is like a [u]variable[/u] Bright to Warm tonal control allowing the user to "stop at all stations" in between Bright and Warm rather than offering an either or choice of presets (albeit alterable through patching) as in for instance the ID Core Series. [br][br]HP Filter is a frequency cut/filter. Cut and pastes on the HP Filter and Brilliance functions straight from the manual below are fairly self-explanatory.

17. H.P. Filter This controls a High Pass Filter. Adjust this trim pot to roll off low-end frequencies from your amplifier’s output. At the minimum setting the frequencies filtered will be below 25Hz, and at the maximum setting, the frequencies filtered will be below 180Hz. Rolling off low frequencies can help with definition in a mix with other instruments.

18. Brilliance Adjust this trim pot to apply an increase or decrease to the higher frequencies of your amplifier’s output. At maximum settings this will result in a brighter, sharper response from your tone. At lower settings, the tone is warm and mellow.

[br]Contemporary featured, versatile and great sounding small venue performing and home studio acoustic amp Anthony.[br]


# 4
anthm
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anthm
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Joined: 05/17/20
Posts: 66
09/22/2021 1:53 am
Originally Posted by: manXcat

You're welcome.

[br]This might assist you in understanding where a guitar amplifer's preamp fits into the amplifcation chain and what it does.

17. H.P. Filter

18. Brilliance .

[br]Contemporary featured, versatile and great sounding small venue performing and home studio acoustic amp Anthony.

Thank you again, it's certainly great info, all of it.

Thanks for what is obviously expert knowledge and advice.

Cheers

Anthony


# 5

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