Help out with an amp question?

[hesson11]

I'm an amplification ignoramus, as will be obvious.

I've got a Roland AC60 acoustic-guitar amp that I almost never use. It has one channel for a pickup and one for a mic. I've always wished I could run two mics into it, one for guitar and one for my alleged voice.

So today I tried an experiment. I've got two dynamic mics (SM 57 and an old cheapo Radio Shack Optimus).

I plugged the SM 57 into the guitar-pickup channel using an XLR-to-3/4" plug adapter (actually an impedance-matching transformer) and used it for vocals.

Then I plugged the Optimus into the mic channel and used it for my guitar. Gingerly turning up the volume, I discovered it worked pretty well—considering I didn't expect it to work at all. I didn't even really need to crank up the volume on one channel vs. the other.

So I have two questions (keep in mind I'd probably never use this setup for anything other than, say, a gathering in a home to overcome conversation noise):

1) Am I hurting anything by doing this (no smoke plumes or ear-splitting explosions yet)?

2) If I replaced the Optimus with a condenser mic for my guitar, would that work, too? THANK YOU!

-Bob

[SongwriterFan]

You're not hurting anything.

As long as the mic you're using doesn't require phantom power, and as long as the gain on the amp can be set to handle the low-level of the mic, you should be able to do this with any mic.

[hesson11]

Thanks very much, 'Fan, I really appreciate it. The amp does, indeed, have phantom power, so I may go ahead and try an inexpensive condenser mic.

(Sorry for posting this on the wrong forum. I'm so UN-electrified, I'd forgotten this section even existed!) Thanks again.
-Bob