Normal acoustic into a mic, or borrow an electro?

DartmoorHedgehog · November 2021

Long story, but short version is that my band were booked for a gig but two of us had to pull out, so the singer and I have agreed to do an acoustic set of our songs as a duo.
Should be quite fun (we're only first of three bands on the bill, so doesn't need to be a long set).
I've not played acoustic guitar at a gig before though, and my acoustic isn't electrified. Is it a bad idea to assume I can play my "manual" acoustic into one of the vocal mics, or should I be looking to borrow an electro-acoustic, or even play electric guitar into a clean amp?
I've used the acoustic into a mic for recordings, which works well, but not sure about live.
We've got a few weeks before the gig, so plenty of time to practice - just looking for any hints from people's experience.

sev112 · November 2021

You’ve got to stay still if going into a mic

I tend to move about a bit even when I’m singing!
best case I had was where my electro acoustic of the time (which was very trebly) was mic’d as well as using the piezo pickup and the sound guy blended the two

DartmoorHedgehog · November 2021

Thanks - I'm not known for moving about much when I'm playing guitar so I think I'll be OK in that department (playing sax, on the other hand, I'm all over the place so couldn't get on with playing into a vocal mic and use a clip-on for that).

ICBM · November 2021

Don't try it unless you're going to be sitting down to play - you won't be able to control the mic distance and position accurately enough if you're standing. Or you could get a soundhole pickup.

Clean electric is an option - or only just overdriven can work, as long as the level is fairly consistent. What types of electric guitar and amp do you have? Some work much better than others, even with a clean sound. Or you could go direct, if you have some sort of multi-FX box...

Roland · November 2021

If you are not used to playing an acoustic under gig conditions then stick with your electric. You are always safer using something you know.

Ideally use a single coil neck pickup into a clean, or almost clean, amp. If you’ve got pedals or multiFX then you might (and I stress might) be able to use small amounts (say 10% mix) of chorus and reverb to soften/thicken the sound.

After one or two songs ask the audience to tell you whether your guitar is too loud or quiet compared with the vocal.

ToneControl · November 2021

or borrow a magnetic pickup and use it in your acoustic

shufflebeat · November 2021

Do what you already do and know. There are multiple issues here, one of them will trip you up.

DartmoorHedgehog · November 2021

Thanks folks. We've got a practice room booked tomorrow evening so I'll take my acoustic and an electric and see how it goes. I like the idea of using the acoustic but keeping the sound consistent with the mic is one of the things I'm a bit worried about - I don't move about much but I don't want to be concentrating too much on staying still and not enough on playing

I don't think I know anybody with a pickup I can borrow, and not worth me buying one as it's such a rare situation. I've got a little clip-on piezo pickup (really cheap) so I could give that a try at practice and see what happens.

Electric options I've got are LP-style with P90s or humbuckers (the humbucker one has a coil split and does sound quite "acousticy" on middle position with split). Or a big hollow-bodied semi (L5 copy), with low-output humbuckers - looks the part but not sure if it really sounds any more "acoustic" than the split-coil solid-body. My normal amp is a Rocker 30, but could use my little practice modeller (Spark).

So lots of options. I think I'll try the acoustic with my cheap pickup and if that's crap I can always fall back on one of the electrics. I play acoustic quite a bit at home, so I'm comfortable playing it - it's just the amplification that may be the problem. I'd like to play acoustic really, because it makes me play differently and I feel it'll sound more like an "acoustic set" rather than just "rest of the band didn't turn up". We record the practice sessions so I'll be able to tell straight away if it sounds any good - I'd rather have to play electric than for it to sound shit.

Thanks again for the hints.

shufflebeat · November 2021

Rather than approach an acoustic part apologetically with a half arsed attempt, why not just re-imagine it with your own voice?

If they want to hear the original there's always Spitofy.

DartmoorHedgehog · November 2021

shufflebeat said:

Rather than approach an acoustic part apologetically with a half arsed attempt, why not just re-imagine it with your own voice?

If they want to hear the original there's always Spitofy.

Not sure what you're getting at there. It definitely won't be half-arsed, and we're certainly going to play the songs differently from how we play with the full band, whichever guitar I end up using. They're all our own songs (well, might throw in a couple of covers) and at least three of the ones we plan to do are yet to be recorded, so nobody will be comparing us to Spotify.

DartmoorHedgehog · November 2021

Well, practice went well last night. I think the winner is hollow electric into clean amp with a bit of very subtle chorus. Tried my cheap clip-on pickup on the acoustic and it was actually better than I expected, but overall I think the electric sounded better (not "more like an acoustic", but just a better sound for what we're doing).

shufflebeat · November 2021

DartmoorHedgehog said:

Well, practice went well last night. I think the winner is hollow electric into clean amp with a bit of very subtle chorus. Tried my cheap clip-on pickup on the acoustic and it was actually better than I expected, but overall I think the electric sounded better (not "more like an acoustic", but just a better sound for what we're doing).

I was going to reply to your last reply but there's no point, you're already doing what I would suggest (there's absolutely no reason why you should take any advice from me) based on your own observations, which I think is a wise choice.

I think the clip on acoustic setup would eventually hit a brick wall and you would be on the same misery-go-round that many other acoustic players have experienced.

On reflection the term "half arsed" looked like it was directed at yourself, that wasn't my intention, it was more to do with my own travels through acoustics-ville.

Good luck.

DartmoorHedgehog · November 2021

shufflebeat said:

On reflection the term "half arsed" looked like it was directed at yourself, that wasn't my intention, it was more to do with my own travels through acoustics-ville.

Good luck.

No worries - no offense taken. I think if this becomes a regular thing I would probably get hold of a better acoustic pickup or a proper electro-acoustic guitar, but for now there's no need for it to sound exactly like an acoustic and the sound we had with the electric suited us really well.

I was actually pleasantly surprised how good my cheap (literally cost about £3) clip-on pickup was though. I've used it before for violin and it works really well with that, but on the guitar it did sound a bit thin. I think if I taped it to the body nearer the bridge it might sound better, but the electric guitar approach is much more predictable so I'll stick with that, at least for now.

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Normal acoustic into a mic, or borrow an electro?

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