Plugging in Acoustic Guitar Directly

[JayB]

Hello,

It looks like only the CQ-20B has Hi-Z inputs, just wondering if anyone had any experience in plugging in an acoustic guitar directly to either a CQ-12T or CQ-18T and whether any of the Guitar presets help get rid of piezo quack?! I understand that can be exacerbated if there is impedance mismatch?

Thanks!

Jay

[Lee7]

Can’t answer your question as I only have the 20B, but why not use inexpensive DI box. I would use one of those even with my 20B.

🙂

[Gaz]

Hi Jay,

Not a direct answer to your question however… did my first gig on Saturday with the CQ20B.. I play acoustic and have a pedal board with a radial engineering J48 active DI fed into a normal input on the CQ with 48v phantom on.
Was using the compressor on the mixer channel and the stock EQ for acoustic guitar with a little more high pass and low pass filter dialled in… added a little easy-verb with the string stock preset…
Can confirm it is the best live sound I have ever had for my acoustic guitar, very full, warm, clear natural sound, no quacking at all, and was very easy to get this pleasing result.
My pickup is a Shadow SH 4020- A with nanoflex under saddle.

My preference is to always use the pedal board with the DI.. this allows me to have a balanced XLR cable for the long cable run across the stage to the mixer and a very short instrument cable between the instrument and the pedalboard. It also allows me to always have a consistent sound and compatible connection when using different PA systems (you will always have an XLR input) whilst sorting out any potential impedance mismatch issues or signal degradation or unwanted noise over long instrument cable runs.
This setup works great for me – so thought I’d share my experience.

[JayB]

Thanks both for your input, much appreciated.

I agree, DI box is the way to go but was just wondering about direct input.

Thanks Gaz for sharing your experience, my guitar came with a nanoflex pickup so that’s encouraging to hear you’ve been able to get a good sound out of it with the CQ20B!

Thanks again,

Jay

[Area51drones]

Great answer Gaz! Looking at J48. Was unaware of their DI line. Thanks. Jim.

[Chienmort]

Jay, does the acoustic have a preamp? If so I think you could treat is as a line input on the mixer. If not, or if the CQ12 does not like the output, get an Ochid DI The Micro DI shown here would be fine for you although their Clasic DI is more versatile.

Orchid Electronics Micro DI Box

[Author]

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