Acoustic Guitar Into Electric Amp with Pedals - Distortion, Delay & More

What's up everybody .

I'm Scott from String Joy guitar strings .

And today is a New Gear Day at String Joy , albeit a very inexpensive New Gear Day .

Uh We got this fender fa 1 35 ce acoustic guitar for like 100 and $40 mainly just because I needed an acoustic electric around the office to do videos with .

Uh but it's a pretty interesting guitar .

It's not uh not a terrible guitar .

There's some issues with the edges of the frets and some comfort , things like that , but overall , it doesn't sound too bad .

But knowing us once we got this thing , the first thing we wanted to do was plug it into an amp and put some fuzz on it .

So today we're gonna talk about whether you can put an acoustic guitar signal into an electric guitar amp hint you can .

But moreover , we're gonna talk about what it sounds like and whether there's any value to doing .

So , so let's jump in .

All right .

So first off , these guitars are made in China under license for the fender name .

Um They have a Fishman pre amp in them with a three band EQ and a nifty little three light , super simple tuner on them .

Um , regular quarter inch output down here as well as a nine volt battery to power the whole thing .

Uh Again , it's not so bad .

The strings on it are a little bit junky for my taste .

Uh This literally came out of the box like 30 minutes ago .

Uh It still smells very plasticky and almost formaldehyde , but I think that'll probably wear out over time .

Um , but again , uh , sands the strings and maybe doing a little bit of work on the frets here to make them a little bit more smooth .

There's not a lot that I would change out of the guitar and for 100 and $40 I don't think it's too bad of a deal .

But what does it sound like through a hospital ?

Let's find out .

All right .

So , first off , let's check out what our clean tone sounds like we're running into this little A peg GVT .

It's a five watt guitar amp .

Even though it's got the A peg name on it .

It's not a bass amp .

Like a lot of people probably think though .

It does kind of have that look .

But anyway , it's a very clean amp with a lot of head room which I suspect is going to sound just fine with this guitar .

So let's take a look .

So not too bad .

Uh Honestly , I think it probably sounds just as good as this little pre AMP ever could running through A P A , uh , maybe even a little bit better since , since it's got the warmth and the tubes and all that sort of good stuff .

Um , but we're gonna lay into some effects .

We're gonna kind of start at the back end on the more ethereal side of the chain and take a listen to what they sound like with this thing .

All right .

So , first up we got the Ryman El Cap , which is an awesome tape delay that you've probably heard of .

Um , we get a lot of people asking whether or not you can put delay on an acoustic guitar and in my opinion , you absolutely can .

Let's take a listen .

So , again , I think that sounds great .

Let's take a listen to some really spacey reverb out of this awesome Caroline pedal .

Again , that sounds pretty great .

Let's try out some compression .

Yeah , I always loved compression and acoustic guitar .

I used to record bands back when I was in college for a little bit of extra money and always felt like an acoustic with just a touch of compression .

Um , really fit really nicely in the mix .

So that works really , really well .

That's a Kily compressor .

Let's see what it sounds like with some chorus , which is something that I've been really , really curious about .

Cool .

So , not bad , very eighties with the chorus on it .

Uh , but it gives it a lot of really nice width and now that we've kind of tested out all the other pedals I have in my little board here .

Let's see what it sounds like with some distortion .

Finally , let's take a listen .

All right .

So as expected , not my favorite Crunch sound in the entire world , but it could sound worse for whatever that's worth .

Uh Now , for our final test , I want to put it through some fuzz and see what this little $140 fender sounds like .

Well , that was interesting .

Uh , obviously we get a lot of problems with feedback , uh , which is something I'm gonna talk about in a second .

But again , that was the mccaffrey Audio Green Vodka .

It sounds even better on not an acoustic guitar , but it sounded kind of cool on an acoustic guitar .

So if you've ever wondered whether or not you can play an acoustic guitar through an electric guitar amp , I hope we've shown you that you definitely can .

It's not my highest recommendation in the entire world .

Anything that comes with Crunch or special fuzz or anything like that , uh , doesn't sound nearly as good as it does through electric pickups , but it will work .

One thing I should mention though is that this acoustic like a lot that you'll see has probably a pie style , uh , pick up underneath the saddle here and that will work .

Ok , with an electric guitar if you get some nicer acoustics where they have microphonic pickup systems inside the guitar or anything like that , that's gonna not sound great because the number one reason people don't use acoustics guitars instead of electric guitars is feedback .

So if you have a semi hollow guitar or a full on hollow body or anything like that , you're probably familiar with the fact that they get a lot more feedback than solid body guitars do .

And acoustic guitars of course , are fully hollow and have very , very thin wood protecting the inside .

So you're gonna get a ton of feedback .

If you're amplifying acoustics , now , you're not necessarily that much worse off than you are .

If you're just playing your acoustic through a sound system , anybody who's played an acoustic that way for a long time knows that feedback is always kind of a trouble .

It's really hard to get a lot of acoustic in your wedge because it really just starts to feed back as soon as possible .

You'll see some things like sound hole rings or things like that to try to get the feedback problem under control , but they don't really solve things entirely .

The thing is when you're sitting right next to a guitar amp and you're using a lot of distortion or overdrive or God forbid Fuzz pedals , you're gonna get a ton of feedback out of an acoustic guitar .

And for that reason alone , it's not generally that much recommended .

But if you're screwing around at home , you're not worried about playing too loud or anything like that .

You can try your acoustic guitar through an electric guitar amp .

It can be fun if you keep it clean and just use it for delay uh or reverb amplified .

I think that can actually sound pretty cool .

But when it comes to things like fuzz and all that , uh this has been fun , but you're probably not gonna see me using an acoustic guitar through a bunch of fuzz pedals again any time soon .

So , what do you think ?

Have you ever played an acoustic electric guitar through an electric guitar amplifier before or through any sort of pedals or stomp boxes or anything like that ?

What's your take ?

Do you like the way it sounds ?

Do you hate the way it sounds ?

Let us know however you feel down in the comments , be sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel for more great stuff in the future .