Boss AC-3: Getting Acoustic Times from your Electric (video comparison)

[McJazzer]

The Boss AC-3 has been in my collection for years. I bought it back when I was playing in a musical theater pit with very limited space and not much time to be able to entirely switch instruments when I needed to anyway. This pedal is not perfect, but I think gets the point across pretty well and has its place if you’re ever in a situation where it doesn’t make sense to bring along and soundcheck a second guitar or if you don’t have enough time to swap.

I recorded a couple different samples so you can see how the AC-3 compares to other different acoustic “solutions.” Keep in mind your own situation as I can see how they each have their own benefits/tradeoffs.
1 - Electric guitar - Boss AC-3 - amp
* This is the easiest, but doesn’t always yield the best results.
2 - Electric guitar - Boss AC-3 - direct to soundboard
* This is easy, but does require some extra setup time as you will need to soundcheck an additional line.
3 - Eastman PCH - piezo DI
* An affordable acoustic guitar - maybe one that you don’t mind getting scratched up
4 - Martin HD-28 - piezo DI
* A very nice acoustic guitar - great sound, but still a piezo tone.
5 - Eastman PCH - SM57 mic
* An affordable guitar with a microphone - great tone, but with the headaches that having a live instrument mic on stage can bring with.
6 - Martin HD-28 - SM57 mic
* The best option for tone, but does a great acoustic tone really matter to you in your situation? Maybe it’s easiest to get the Boss AC-3 and skip all the hassle of a second instrument and a live mic

I’ll leave this here as a resource for anyone thinking about picking up the Boss AC-3.

[McJazzer]

Another very valid technique for getting an acoustic tone is to use an Impulse Response - but that’s a whole other topic. You’ll need a special IR-loading pedal like one of the Fishman products for that. The way I see it, an IR is using a short reverb to apply a very specific EQ to your sound. That’s also how I perceive the AC-3 to be operating - as an EQ preset.


Oddly enough, the single technique that I’ve found most useful to getting a convincing acoustic tone through the method of using the AC-3 or an impulse response is just changing the way you play. I actually lower the volume on my acoustic effects in relation to the rest of my rig so that I am forced to dig in. One of the biggest differences between acoustic and electric guitars is the sustain you get from an electric. I normally like to play with a relatively soft touch so that I get a smooth, sustaining tone with not much transient. To counteract this when I play hard with the acoustic effect, I am getting a sharp transient and then the perceivable sustain of the note is much shorter. Sorry for the essay

[Woody Sound]

Nice video. Have you trried it through an acoustic amp, or a frfr speaker?

[John A.]

Another very valid technique for getting an acoustic tone is to use an Impulse Response - but that’s a whole other topic. You’ll need a special IR-loading pedal like one of the Fishman products for that. The way I see it, an IR is using a short reverb to apply a very specific EQ to your sound. That’s also how I perceive the AC-3 to be operating - as an EQ preset.

Impulse response effects are not not EQ + Reverb. the term I/R refers to a method for modeling a dynamic sytsem's response to impulses (inputs) based on samples (e.g., of a guitar's response to picking, a room's reverberant response to sound, etc) of the system's output, and mapping that response onto other signals (e.g., a guitar pickup's output). This article is a pretty clear explanation. Besides I/R, the other main way of modeling a dynamic audio system's behavior is by analyzing and modeling its individual components' behavior mathematically (e.g., the components or circuit blocks in an amp), stringing those components together in a larger model that emulates the complete system, and mapping that model onto an input. That's what Roland's COSM models (used on the AC-3) do.

John

[McJazzer]

All good information John and thanks for sharing. As an IR is used in this situation, I think it makes more sense to think of it as a way of applying a specific EQ to a signal. That’s not a complete picture and IRs have way more uses than this specific situation but generally it gets the point across as to how an IR is useful.
Woody - yes. An acoustic amp would be an example of something I would use the DI output for. I have a fishman loudbox mini that accompanies me on theater gigs as a general workhorse.

[John A.]

All good information John and thanks for sharing. As an IR is used in this situation, I think it makes more sense to think of it as a way of applying a specific EQ to a signal. That’s not a complete picture and IRs have way more uses than this specific situation but generally it gets the point across as to how an IR is useful.
Woody - yes. An acoustic amp would be an example of something I would use the DI output for. I have a fishman loudbox mini that accompanies me on theater gigs as a general workhorse.

An EQ is a filter - a device that raises or lowers the volume of frequencies in a signal. That is not what either something like a Fishman Aura or a Boss AC pedal does. Both of those are digital signal processing devices that take an audio signal and transform it into a different waveform, with different harmonic properties. Calling these a kind of EQ does not get the point across of what they do because it implies that you can use an EQ to make an electric guitar sound like an acoustic guitar, which you can't.

John

[McJazzer]

Cool. I don’t intend for this to get overly technical but I appreciate your passion.