Effects order in chain with Zoom A3?

[Irish Pennant]

Originally Posted by michael76

PA mostly and gigs in churches. My gear is cool tube preamp on board, boss GE7, Mooer yellow compressor, Digitech Polara reverb

Is it your PA? do you have control over the mixer board? what type of mixer board?

[lschwart]

Originally Posted by michael76

Maybe I haven't understand some basic things and let me ask something noob again: a guitar with an active preamp on board can be connected to a series of pedals with last pedal a preamp/DI send to PA or the preamp/DI must always be the first pedal and connect the other pedals in FX loop if it has one?
Also do I need something like e.x PARA DI for better sound quality or I can just use my pedals (EQ,Compressor,Reverb) and a passive DI to have a natural sound?If so what's all the fuzz with these expensive acoustic preamps everyone is talking about?

The key is that most passive acoustic pickups, like the piezo in your guitar, need a preamp and buffer with a high input impedance to get their signals to the level appropriate for going through a long cable run and/or a bunch of effects pedals. The preamp in your guitar's onboard system gives you that right away making your signal pretty much usable into anything you're likely to connect to. Most pickups also need some EQ to sound good, usually a matter of cutting some of the less natural sounding mids. Your preamp also gives you that. So, there's no reason why you couldn't plug into a few pedals, maybe also an EQ pedal for more tweaking of the sound. Then a DI box at the end will balance the signal and lower the impedance so that it can go through whatever length you need without signal loss or noise into a mic input on a mixer. If you had a passive pickup, you could still do it this way, but you'd have to make sure that whatever you plugged into first had the right high input impedance and gave you the necessary boost to drive the signal though the effects without picking up a lot of noise. FWIW, your GE7, put first in your chain, would do that for you if you had a passive pickup--many people have used one successfully as an acoustic preamp as well as an EQ unit--I have myself--15dB of boost, 1 megOhm input impedance, EQ controls--just what you need. Noisier than my Radial PZ-Pre and with rougher EQ and none of the other features, but as a basic preamp/EQ it works.

People use an acoustic preamp like those I listed earlier in this thread (or units like your A3, for that matter) because they want all of these functions in one compact unit. Many of these also offer much finer EQ control than is on offer in an onboard system like yours or on a typical combo amp or PA mixer. An effects loop in the unit also allows the addition of effects after the preamp and EQ, but before the DI output, and some of these units also offer other useful things like feedback filters, the option of mixing-in a mic signal or second pickup source, switching between two instruments, high pass filters, phase reversal, foot-controllable boost and/or mute, tuners, etc.. Other units offer various kinds of processing designed to add a more natural acoustic tone to the pickup sound (digital imaging, saturation, etc.).

One more thing: you mentioned earlier that you haven't been happy with the sound your get with the A3, but remember that the problem might not be the A3. It might be your pickup sound itself. If you try going through the GE7 and pedals to a DI and it still doesn't sound good to you, you might consider another type of pickup. Or maybe someting like a ToneDexter. I'm not saying that the Takamine system is a bad one. It's actually one of the better onboard systems, but that doesn't mean it sounds the way *you* want to sound. It also might be worth being patient with yourself and the controls on the A3, which are pretty extensive. It might be that the sound you want is available in there, but you haven't yet found it.

Louis

[michael76]

OK I get it now, thanks for the explanation.Do you propose an active or passive DI for a system like mine?

[lschwart]

Originally Posted by michael76

OK I get it now, thanks for the explanation.Do you propose an active or passive DI for a system like mine?

It doesn't matter. A simple passive one will be fine and might be easier to use in some circumstances (no need to worry about power, although most active DIs will run on phantom power and most boards supply it).

Louis