Most of you will encounter a live environment before you find yourselves in a recording studio, so we'll look at live applications, then at recording situations, setups, and gear.

Though I cannot claim to be an expert at acoustic guitar recording, I do have SOME experience in running acoustics through a Public Address system and getting these peculiar animals onto tape. I'll try to distill some of that experience here for you.

Using a dedicated amplifier gives YOU control over you sound. It means that regardless of what other gear is available on stage, you're prepared to give your acoustic volume a boost, and that is a real plus in jamming situations. Having an amp that you like means you don't have to rely on a full P.A. to be heard. Trace Elliot, Crate, Peavy, Marshall, and Prime all make dedicated acoustic amps, so check those out if you want to imitate the electric guitarists joining your group. Pearce even offers an amp that claims to handle BOTH acoustic and electric needs (their G3-a Electro-Acoustic Amplifier). The potential downside is that most dedicated acoustic amplifiers tend to be both rare and a little pricy.

There ARE alternatives, though. One alternative is to use a bass amp. Modern bass sounds require far more sonic coverage than the "woofy" bass sounds of yesteryear. My brother plays bass through a Hartke 1155 Combo. Basically, it's got a 15" driver and a 5" driver. We plugged his Yamaha acoustic guitar into that amp and were blown away by the sound! I think the key is the fact that the amp is a two-way speaker design. It's got separate drivers working on the lows and highs, and I think that this preserves the breadth of the guitar's audio spectrum.

Another alternative is to look for a moderately priced Keyboard amp. Once again, the principles that go into the keyboard amp are similar to those for the acoustic guitar: wide dynamic range, broad frequency coverage, and minimal coloration of the instrument's sound. And again, most keyboard systems will have two-way speakers.

And though I've sounded positive about running through bass and keyboard amps, I'll say at this point that using an electric guitar amplifier to drive an acoustic guitar is probably NOT such a good idea. I've heard a couple of guys try to run acoustics through guitar amps, and at anything but the LOWEST sound levels, the results have usually been poor. Electric guitar amps really have a limited frequency response. The sound coming out of your acoustic, by contrast, is an incredibly complicated sound; it really covers much of the audio spectrum, from the crisp highs down to the thump of the guitar body as you play it. Electric guitar amps are really more mid-rangey than that.

But this is all written from a theoretical standpoint. The experiences that I've had won't necessarily apply to all amplifiers or instruments. As with all things, though, the key issue is that you TRY it out and listen to what your EARS say. If you've got a full Marshall stack, and think your acoustic sounds good running through it, then more power to you (in fact, MUCH more power!).

Running Through the P.A. System

Running through the P.A. has some distinct advantages. First off, however cheap and cheezy your P.A. may be, its likely to have a better frequency response than any other amp in your possession. Secondly, I think that running through the P.A. immediately puts your sound out FRONT better than an amp might. That's more of a judgement call, of course. I play electric on stage, but I WANT most of my guitar's volume to be coming from the mains, NOT my amp. I feel the same way about my acoustic sounds.

And there's a political consideration here: If your band has a soundman (oops, soundperson ), the fact that you are willing to turn ALL aspects of your sound over to him/her will endear you to them. Nothing aggravates a sound engineer more than a player who keeps turning up during the gig because he or she wants to be LOUDER. Even a private talk with the sound engineer may be enough to address your special needs.

But there are downsides to playing through the P.A. Hearing yourself is one of them. Unless your band has a pretty nice monitoring system, hearing your acoustic playing might be a challenge. It's not as simple for you as it is for bassists and guitarists, who can simply inch a little closer to their amps to really hear themselves. And if you're only running one "channel" or send of monitor sound, the other vocalists may not appreciate or want the same level of acoustic sound in the monitors as you do.

Signal Path

Your needs may vary depending on the guitar. For instance, I use an Ovation Balladeer onstage. Using it CAN be as simple as plugging in a cord and feeding it to the mixer. But in general, we can use the following signal path to represent most situations:

Guitar --> Pickup ---> Cable ---> Processing -----> Mixer ---> Power Amp ---> Speakers

We'll tackle these one by one and address them.

1. Guitar -- This goes without saying....
2. Pickup -- This means either magnetic pickup, piezo pickup, or microphone.
3. Cable -- Not usually a BIG consideration sonically. I mean it should WORK and all....
4. Processing -- Could be anything from a simple reverb or EQ or a more advanced signal processor.
5. Mixer -- Unless you have a special amplifier for your guitar, your sound will probably go through the P.A. system.
6. Power Amp -- If you go through the P.A. system, then this isn't a consideration.
7. Speakers -- If you have a specialized amplifier, then this isn't a consideration.

The REAL world

Now all this talk of dedicated amps and effects sure is nice. But VERY few of us live in an ideal world. I think for acoustic guitarists there are three different approaches to live performances:

• Do nothing: Simply plug into the board (whether it be from a mic or an internal pickup on my guitar) and hope for the best with my sound.
• Minimal Gear/Enhancement: This means that I use whatever onboard EQ, reverb are available on the instrument, and maybe a preamp of some sort. But otherwise take what I get.....
• Total Sonic "Package": This approach suggests that I will arrive at a gig/playing opportunity with a handful of pedals/rack units that supposedly represent "my sound."

I'll address each of these in turn, and try to give you a "practical" standpoint based on my own experience.

Do Nothing

If you're ever "caught" somewhere with an instrument and asked to take to the stage with precious little else in terms of preparation, then this is the category into which you're likely to fall. Odds are, you'll plug straight into the P.A. system and take what you get from the mains. If you're lucky, you'll get to hear some of yourself in the monitors.

My recommendation is that you keep a good attitude and do your best with what you have. If you've agreed to take the stage when you're largely unprepared, then you should be gracious enough to be patient with those who are trying to "feature" you there. Getting pissed off probably won't improve your sonic fate.

Minimal Gear/Enhancement

When I say "minimal enhancement," I really mean having the benefit of something OTHER than just the mixer to get your sound. This could be anything from a simple stompbox EQ, to a similar compressor, or even an Alesis Quadraverb.

Since I perform on stage with an Ovation Balladeer, I tend to bring an Alesis Microverb II with me to any gig, and use the Microverb as a preamp for my acoustic stage setup. It's small, compact, offers some volume control (via the input and output knobs) and it gives you an assortment of 16 really nice reverb sounds to choose from. Scholz R&D offers something called the Acoustic Guitar Pedal. Though the control labels border on the mystical (with "Top" and "Body"), it is rumored to improve any acoustic's sound, probably with mostly EQ-based processing. I've never heard the pedal, but I've been impressed with most OTHER pieces of gear coming out of Scholz R&D, so I'm inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. That pedal should run you just a little over $100.

Total Sonic "Package"

Those of you fortunate enough to have a rack of signal processors go into this category When given my "druthers," I'll hit the stage with gear similar to my recording preferences. The music industry has been kind enough to provide us with some comprehensive Acoustic processing packages. I've seen some really nice offerings from Fishman, including their Acoustic Blender. Rane offers a really well thought-out preamp that incorporates inputs for both piezo- and mircophone-based acoustic guitar sound sources, and allows for the blending of the two sonic sources (sadly, I forget the name of this particular unit). Bear in mind, of course, that I haven't tried EITHER of these units, so I can't comment on their performance. But the THEORY involved is perfectly sound.

I've also seen a handful of dedicated floor effect pedal packages designed for acoustic guitars. These, in fact, will work just fine either through an amp, or straight into the P.A. DOD's Acoustic 1 and the Korg G2 are both designed specifically for acoustics. Both offer limiting or compression, some EQ, notch filter (a nice touch, for nailing specific feedback frequencies), chorus, reverb, and a "12-string simulator." A pretty nice assortment, if you ask me. They'll run you about $300, which may be a little more than some of you players want to shell out. But considering the number of effects packed into these units, their value is still pretty good.

The single most important tool I use when recording acoustic guitar is my trusty Furman LC-6 Stereo Compressor/Gate. Actually, it's probably the single most important piece of gear for ANY recording I do. Seriously. The recording that I do is strictly cassette-based 4-track recording. It's a pretty noisy medium. So my challenge is to squeeze every bit of sound that I can onto tape. I do this by using some medium-light compression to even out my dynamic levels. I know that the acoustic's dynamic range is one of its more expressive elements, but try telling THAT to your noise floor. Even with Dolby or dbx noise reduction, you're STILL going to be fighting to get past the tape hiss. So by compressing my guitar's dynamic range, I not only give the impression that I'm a steadier, more even player, but I am able to increase my record levels accordingly.

Another tool that I use when I need to is EQ. Changing the tonal character of a particular instrument can be very helpful. Plus, if the pickup system or microphone on your instrument lends a "coloration" that you find unpleasant, you can tweak the EQ to help eliminate some of that.

Enhancement of some sort can be VERY useful to an acoustic sound. BBE makes some superb enhancers, which blend high frequencies to the original sound only when they are present in the original, which makes your sound crisper and brighter without making it more "hissy."

Reverb is the last piece of the pie. And unless you're building a recording studio from the ground up, any studio you go into will have a good (or at least favorite) reverb processor on hand to "augment" your sound. If you ARE building up studio gear, any number of Alesis, Lexicon, Yamaha, or Digitech products will provide you with a good reverb sound. Currently, I'm favoring the "Gigaverb" settings on my Digitech GSP 2101 "Artist." It's a deep, full reverb with a lot of character. As a bonus, the module offers a handful of preamp options that include compression (my favorite!) and clean vacuum tube sounds.

Some creativity while recording never hurts, of course. It's not just the musicians who get to be creative in the recording studio: combining these elements in innovative ways can result in some surprising results. Case in point: a colleague and musical associate of mine wrote a whole bunch of music for our band on this cheap little archtop guitar. In some ways, it sounded like a cigar box with strings. It had an internal pickup, but the sound quality coming out of it was little more than a joke. Odd thing was, the guitar became an essential component of the band's sound: it's complex harmonic structure was unique; the way it created "rogue" harmonics when struck was unique (and we KNOW this: this guitarist has since bought a new, beautiful archtop, and some of his older pieces simply don't WORK on it). So we had to find a way to record it.

The first thing I did was to try to dissect the sound itself. The guitar was RIDICULOUSLY mid-rangey; I think that was a function of construction materials and that little contact pickup that had been mounted internally. It almost sounded like an electric in that sense. Since this guitarist uses alternate tunings with a lot of LOW voicings, the first thing I did to the sound was to run it through a simple 10-band EQ (that was all I had; a 31-band EQ would have been nicer....) and try to balance the frequencies. I ended up boosting the lows and low mids, dipping down to cuts in the midrange, and finally pulling out for some of the highs, something like this:

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             30  60  120 240 500 1K  2K  4K  8K 16K

Again, the bottom line is that you should trust your ears. Create the sound that you hear in your head. If you want something pure and simple, fine. But if you want something creative, GO for it. When you think about it, "Hotel California" wouldn't have been the same song without that acoustic sound through a Leslie speaker. Be bold. Be brave. And just PLAY!

I just got back from the Joe Walsh Home Page, and found this exchange in the "ask Joe" section....

So there you have it, straight from the Ordinary Average Guy himself. It was an ELECTRIC 12-string. Damn, had ME fooled all along.... So now I've pulled "Hotel California" out of my list of song examples....