Acoustic solo and duo live setups
 

What is your live setup? I’ve always played full band style and want to try my hand at playing a few smaller scale places.

I was considering grabbing up a Bose compact tower speaker, maybe a looper pedal of some sort (that isn’t extremely lame after the first song), a few effects here and there. Wanted to look into some simple but effective lighting just for the factor.

How do you guys keep your shows interesting?

Hey Dropq,

For solo or duo smaller room gigs, Rainsong CH-OM or Gibson G-00 into Fishman Tonedeq and EHX 720 looper to Bose S1 up on a pole. Sennheiser 935 mic.

Medium size room, Fishman Loudbox Artist up on a pole.

Large size room, Fishman Loudbox into to two JBL EON610 speakers.

I checked out that tonedeq, what a great pedal! Gotta try one! I loved my EONs when I had them, incredible speakers imo.

My setup....
EAE M2-6 Amp
Mic stand
Samsung Tablet and stand holder
Se V7 mic or Lewitt MTP250
Either a Zoom G1-Four for my Epiphone ES339-P90 Limited
or
Zoom A1-Four for my Alvarez MD60BG/610BG
Cords of course

For my office studio...

I don't use my amp..
Samsung Tablet and stand holder which works as a desktop holder also
Neat Worker Bee Condenser mic
Zoom G1 Four if I'm playing my strat or Epiphone
I haven't use the Zoom A1 Four for my Alvarez
Into a Mixer/interface into my computer

I do solo fingerstyle gigs, no vocals:

Guitars - Sunnaudio MS2 preamp - tuner - Styrmon Flynt - Bose S1 pro.

I try to keep my rig as simple as possible. On the occasions where I need more, usually it's at a place where they have a PA already, in which case the S1 pro is used as a monitor. I also have a Yamaha DXR10 if I need more, but it rarely gets used. Good thing too, the **** thing is heavy.

Bose Pro32 w/Sub2
Bose T4S
Martin HD-28 w/LR Baggs Anthem
Sennheiser E965
TC Helicon Play Acoustic
iPad running Guitar Tabs

Small Behringer mixer into two Bose L1Cs. No looper or tracks. We keep the show interesting by good playing and singing as well as appropriate audience interaction as dictated by the situation.

Fishman 330 x soloamp,seinnheiser vocal mic,book for lyrics[rarely used],FishmanEQ Platium.

Heil PR35 mic, LR Baggs AR amp, Yamaha MG12XU mixer (when I play in a trio), Golden Age Pre73 MKIII preamp

I usually gig with both an acoustic and an electric (with modeling pedal, no amp) and microphone, so I use a mixer.

Full rig is guitars*/mic > Behringer XR18 mixer > Two QSC K10.2's plus QSC CP8 for a monitor.

* Guitar chains: Acoustic > Grace Alix preamp > Mooer Yellow Comp > TC Hall of Fame 2 reverb. Electric > Boss GT-1000core.

If it's a small space, I might just run the mixer to one K10 "high and behind" and not use a monitor.

If I were doing an acoustic-only, very small show, I could just take the CP8 and plug guitar & mic straight into it. (No reverb for vocals since I get it from the mixer, but for such a setting I wouldn't worry about it.)

An Elite Acoustics D6-58. One amp, battery powered, on a stand, plenty of power, plenty of control, fantastic sound, looks beautiful in the wood grained cabinet!

Same here. Wife and I, acoustic duo, one guitar (RainSong Nashville OM Shorty Custom), two mics, one mic stand all through wireless (small battery type) systems into a single EAE D6-58 on a pole. Everything run on battery. No external power needed, no cords of any kind. 10 minute set up and tear down. Excellent sound for any size gig we play.

Good morning!

I use the same setup when I play solo or duo. For my duo, it’s just adding a vocalist who plays some percussion.

You can see my rig in my signature. This has worked well for me for a few years now. I do use a looper to allow me to play some lead over simple progressions. I don’t do the layering that some do. To me, that gets old pretty quickly. Instead I simply loop a verse or chorus progression while I’m singing, then play lead over that. And I probably only use the looper on about 20-30% of the songs we do.

Unless you truly enjoy technology, keep it simple. That’s what we have learned after performing as a duet for almost three years now.

Couple of my favorite mics to the point I have backups on both of them.