Acoustic through my electric pedalboard out to the PA?

[jtw]

Has anyone ever tried this? I just found out that the band I'm subbing for has an acoustic gig on Saturday. I thought it was going to be the full band. The lineup is three female vocalists, one of which plays fiddle and sometimes acoustic, another that also ocasionally plays acoustic, and the third strictly sings.

I'm thinking about bringing my gigging pedalboard for my electric rig. Run the acoustic through the pedalboard, direct box, then out to the board. My reasoning is that I can use my clean boost slightly for solos and I also don't want to have to pull my tuner off the board to bring separately.

Any thoughts?

[Monkey23]

I haven't tried it at high volumes, but I play my acoustic through my electric all the time at low volumes. Not ideal since the frequency range of an electric amp won't provide you with the larger frequency range of an acoustic amp, but it works.

[jtw]

Just to clarify, i wouldn't be using my electric amp, just acoustic through my electric pedalboard, then out to the PA.

[planetal]

I've kinda done this, although I used a LR Baggs Para acoustic preamp and ran the pedal board through the baggs loop.. (i.e. acoustic into bags.. bags has an effects loop s/r.. and then direct into pa from bags unit)
sounded quite good actually.

[jgm]

I've done this a lot and, of course depending on the pedals, it can sound good. I use a Carl Martin Parametric EQ pedal that is similar to planetal's Par DI. Mine is truly a footswitch, built like a tank and GREAT audio with an XLR and 1/4" out. I put this at the end of the chain and it's a great DI. Extremely versatile piece of equipment for not a lot of money.

Try to keep any pedal you're not going to use out of the loop since signal degredation might be a bit more noticeable with an acoustic guitar. Electric guitar pedals might buffer and color in a way you don't want so any modulation pedals you're not going to use might be better unplugged. My old Boss EQ had nowhere near the fidelity of the Martin piece and was a lot noisier for example. If your acoustic has a bult-in pre you'll probably get better results. Try listening through your electric amp and you'll get a pretty good idea what can work.

[Den]

I've done this using my iMix equipped Goodall and it sounds excellent. My board is pretty simple w/ mostly true-bypass pedals (except for two boss pedals) and there are no issues. I really love what my Tim pedal does for an acoustic lead tone.

[jtw]

Thanks for all the replies, it's really helpful. My pedal chain (just for reference) is the following...

TU2 tuner>Klon>Keeley AD9 Analog delay

[John Phillips]

Yes, I do this too. I use my small pedalboard which has a Crybaby 535, Boss Distortion-Feedbacker, Frantone Brooklyn Overdrive, Boss DM-2 delay, MXR Micro-chorus, Boss PH-1R phaser, RAT and Boss TU-2 tuner on it. And yes, I use all the effects... though more sparingly, and I have the distortions set more mildly, than for electric playing - and I don't use more than one distortion pedal at the same time like I do with electric. It does still cause problems with feedback sometimes, which is why I switched to using a semi-solid "acoustic" for anything where I need to do that at higher volume.

[marsodude]

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t271/marsodude/Gear02-1.jpg
I run this rig for Worship. I send the acoustic signal thru the Peterson SS and then straight to the board. I send the electric signal thru the pedals then amp then mic'ed to the board. Tomorrow, we are doing an acoustic set. I will leave the amp at home. I will run the acoustic side thru the pedals and then DI it to the board. It sounds AWESOME!

[CaptainCrunch]

Just did the same thing last weekend for a couple of events, but I just quickly re-routed a couple of things, taking my distortion pedals out of the chain, leaving my tuner, compressor, delay and chorus. Worked great.