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Old 06-23-2009, 10:57 AM
Big.Al Big.Al is offline
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OK, I'll add my $.02. It's all about matching the impedance of the input to the impedance of the source. (Impedance is kind of like electrical resistance.)

XLR is a low-impedance balanced connector. Professional-type microphones are low impedance. The advangages are that you can use a really, really long cable to hook things up without picking up a lot of noise or losing any of the signal.

On an acoustic amp, the 1/4" input is typically very high impedance. This allows you to hook up a high impedance source, like a piezo-based pickup without a preamp, e.g. K&K Pure Western, etc. The high impedance input puts almost no load on the signal source, so the piezo doesn't sound as brittle and quacky. Even a passive magnetic pickup sounds better hooked to a high impedance input. The downside is that long cables can get noisy or start to sound bad. As opposed to an acoustic amp, the 1/4" inputs on a typical mixer aren't all that high impedance. If you need to hook up a high impedance source to an XLR input, or to a mixer, it's best to use preamp or an active DI box (one that needs power) in between the source and the input.

If your guitar pickup has a battery, you could probably hook up to either input without a problem . . . but if you're going to need something like a 50 foot cable, the XLR may give you better results.

Last edited by Big.Al; 06-23-2009 at 10:59 AM. Reason: punctuation
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