Electric Pedals for Acoustic Use?

[hatamoto]

Straightforward question. I'm new to pedals. I have some pedals for my electric. Can I use those for acoustic too? Does it matter, or do they make pedals specifically for acoustic?

I only have a looper, reverb, delay and compressor.

[YamahaGuy]

Some pedals cross over to just about any instrument well. I've even used guitar pedals with a vocal mic.

Others will disagree I'm sure, but all of those except maybe the compression pedal will be great with acoustic. Personally, I find that a compressor limits my ability to get dynamics from percussive elements of my playing.

Fwiw, I run my bass through my acoustic pedal board all the time and it sounds great through it.

[SupremeDalek]

My acoustic and electric share the same pedal board. I've never tried a compressor, but I'm certainly willing to if the situation presents itself. It might work for me, but either way I'm willing to try almost anything with my guitars.

QTron, Keeley 1962, Boss SD1, Carbon Comp

[Lost Sheep]

Originally Posted by YamahaGuy

Some pedals cross over to just about any instrument well. I've even used guitar pedals with a vocal mic.

I have wondered about that myself. Using a chorus pedal to try to make it sound like there is more than one of me and such things.

How did it work?

In an effort to avoid hijacking this thread, I will create a new thread, "Instrument Pedals for Vocals?". Please reply there.

Thank you very much.

Lost Sheep

[hatamoto]

Originally Posted by YamahaGuy

Some pedals cross over to just about any instrument well. I've even used guitar pedals with a vocal mic.

Others will disagree I'm sure, but all of those except maybe the compression pedal will be great with acoustic. Personally, I find that a compressor limits my ability to get dynamics from percussive elements of my playing.

Fwiw, I run my bass through my acoustic pedal board all the time and it sounds great through it.

That's neat. I never thought of it that way. I can't sing, but I'm guessing any other instruments provided you can hook it up to the pedals properly would work great.

I've tried the compressor last night. You can hear the difference but I don't think it's an improvement. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either.

[Nymuso]

I use the same for both.

[perttime]

Give it a try. Nothing is going to explode when you do.

[Thin Crust]

I don’t have an “electric pedalboard”, mainly because I don’t play electric guitar. My pedalboard, however, might indicate otherwise. Except for the Alix Pre-Amp, everything else is universal. Up until recently that included a Strymon Reverb, Chorus, and Compressor, along with a Fender tuner and a vocal gizmo. I honestly didn’t use the Chorus much, and the Compressor was unnecessary. So now it’s a stripped down version with only the Alix and the Strymon Blue Sky Reverb.

I will add this, and it’s nothing more than my opinion, but after trying several reverbs it seems acoustic instruments emphasize impurities in the signal. Get a good one.

[erniecaster]

Originally Posted by perttime

Give it a try. Nothing is going to explode when you do.

THIS!

Very often units are packed into a "woody" house and sold for a lot more money for us acoustic people. An EQ is an EQ, a delay is a delay - you get the idea.

cu

erniecaster

[rockabilly69]

Originally Posted by YamahaGuy

Some pedals cross over to just about any instrument well. I've even used guitar pedals with a vocal mic.

Others will disagree I'm sure, but all of those except maybe the compression pedal will be great with acoustic. Personally, I find that a compressor limits my ability to get dynamics from percussive elements of my playing.

Fwiw, I run my bass through my acoustic pedal board all the time and it sounds great through it.

Some of the most famous acoustic sounds ever recorded where helped along by compressors (Steven Stills etc), and I find when used correctly, compressors work great with acoustics keeping the spiky signals of guitar pickups in check, and slighty fattening the tone of thin UST pickups..

During Covid lockdowns, I put alot of thought into building a pedal board with presets for songs built around an HX Stomp pedal. I wanted a good core analog tone feeding the HX Stomp, so before it gets to the Stomp, the signal passes through a JHS Colour Box V2, and a MXR compressor to keep the signal from hitting the input to hard when I get heavy handed. The board sounds great, here it is a yesterdays gig...



(If you loook on top of my subwoofer you'll see I have a vocal FX unit too! It's a TC Mic Mechanic which I love for delay's and reverb on my voice, it also does d'essing, compression, and pitch correction, which I don't use other than for for one or two songs for special effect. If you sing lazily into it pitch wise you can get the pitch correction to double and that sounds great for Beatleesque tones for songs like Norwegian Wood.)

[rllink]

Originally Posted by perttime

Give it a try. Nothing is going to explode when you do.

Agreed. I plug my acoustic into my pedal board and then through a Marshall electric guitar amp and play around with it all the time. Some combinations work and some sound horrible, but you never know til you try. It is called gaining experience.

[mjh42]

That's what I been doing the last two months. I wanted just a little more than the amp and the instrument so I've done a lot of online research listening. I've talked to people I know that know about pedals. I spent about a year and half with a Zoom digital multi effects pedal to figure out some effects and sounds that I might want before going into more expensive and single pedals. I've spent some money. Now to sit down and play around, have some fun. Listen. I've just slightly reordered my board this evening. Sounds better. More playing time and dialing in what I want with the songs I play. More research too. Have several more pedals on my list at Sweetwater but I can wait a while till I give what I've got a thorough work out. Give some pedals a try see what happens....if you don't like the sound...unplug and move along.

[rockabilly69]

Originally Posted by mjh42

That's what I been doing the last two months. I wanted just a little more than the amp and the instrument so I've done a lot of online research listening. I've talked to people I know that know about pedals. I spent about a year and half with a Zoom digital multi effects pedal to figure out some effects and sounds that I might want before going into more expensive and single pedals. I've spent some money. Now to sit down and play around, have some fun. Listen. I've just slightly reordered my board this evening. Sounds better. More playing time and dialing in what I want with the songs I play. More research too. Have several more pedals on my list at Sweetwater but I can wait a while till I give what I've got a thorough work out. Give some pedals a try see what happens....if you don't like the sound...unplug and move along.

Although I have done exactly what you are doing now, swapping pedals around looking for magic tones, I recently did it the exact opposite of that. I built my acoustic pedal board that I just started using this week around an HX Stomp MultiFx (although it does have a boutique preamp in front of it).
There are many ways to skin a cat, and it's fun building boards

[varmonter]

i use the hx stomp as well.
its designed for electric guitar
but is very useable for
acoustic. i use it more for ease
if switching instrument.
i play guitar bass and mandolin
in the band and having presets
is easier than fiddling with knobs.
but i now have all those electric
sounds to play with as well.

[rockabilly69]

Originally Posted by varmonter

i use the hx stomp as well.
its designed for electric guitar
but is very useable for
acoustic. i use it more for ease
if switching instrument.
i play guitar bass and mandolin
in the band and having presets
is easier than fiddling with knobs.
but i now have all those electric
sounds to play with as well.

yep the electric sounds are a bonus