Electric acoustic guitar. Mini-board recommendations

[Lukasz]

Hello,

I would like to build a small board that will be a gift
I am interested with recommendations for pedals that work well with electric acoustic guitar,
or are worth trying.

Board will be used by singer/guitarist so I am not looking for some "weird noises" etc,
just want to improve the tone and add some flexibility.

So far I was considering following units:

• Compressor (General TSO?)
• Preamp / Booster / EQ (This one and Compressor is biggest question to me. What is worth trying here?)
• Modulation (No more than 2) Chorus / Vibrato / Tremolo / Phase (I was thinking about Phase XC/Circulator and some Chorus)
• Reverb (Probably Gravitation )
• Delay (Optional, probably something simple)

Some other pedals that attracted my attention, but i never tried them:

• Magnetron Delay (Magnetic Echo) - maybe it could work for faux chorus and delay sounds?
• Maleficent Mids (JHS Haunting Mids)
• BBW (BBE Sonic Stomp)
• Pro-Filter (Anderton Super Tone Control)
• VHS (JHS VCR) (This one is FV-1, so i will probably not go with it)

Any PCB recommendations and opinions are welcome Thank You.

 

[szukalski]

Sproing Deluxe could kill two birds with one stone.

 

[Bricksnbeatles]

• Compressor I haven’t tried the General Tso yet, but it seems like it would be a decent choice. My initial thought was either the Thumb Sucker or the Delegate Boneyard Edition.
• Preamp / Booster / EQ Without a doubt, the best option for acoustic would be the Equilux. Unfortunately it’s quite large so it might not be ideal for a small board like you’re making, but @Robert does have a mini version in the works!
• Modulation Phase II & Cepheid Chorus
• Reverb Spatialist
• Delay Unison Double Tracker. It’s listed as a modulation board here, and I guess in a sense it is, but it’s based on the keeley 30ms, which does a really nice slapback in one mode, and a great lightly detuned doubling delay in another that sounds incredible on acoustic for the classic late-Beatles-y acoustic sound (think Across the Universe)

 

[Lukasz]

• Compressor I haven’t tried the General Tso yet, but it seems like it would be a decent choice. My initial thought was either the Thumb Sucker or the Delegate Boneyard Edition.
• Preamp / Booster / EQ Without a doubt, the best option for acoustic would be the Equilux. Unfortunately it’s quite large so it might not be ideal for a small board like you’re making, but @Robert does have a mini version in the works!
• Modulation Phase II & Cepheid Chorus
• Reverb Spatialist
• Delay Unison Double Tracker. It’s listed as a modulation board here, and I guess in a sense it is, but it’s based on the keeley 30ms, which does a really nice slapback in one mode, and a great lightly detuned doubling delay in another that sounds incredible on acoustic for the classic late-Beatles-y acoustic sound (think Across the Universe)

One additional info. I am thinking on pedals more for live player, than a tweaker.
So i this case i considering rather simpler pedals (i.e. Gravitation over Spatialist Reverb)

Like the idea of: Thumb Sucker, Cepheid Chorus and Unison Double Tracker.

What do you think about Maleficent Mids in place of Equilux?

 

[Bricksnbeatles]

One additional info. I am thinking on pedals more for live player, than a tweaker.
So i this case i considering rather simpler pedals (i.e. Levitation over Spatialist Reverb)

I definitely get that. My main reason for suggesting the Spatialist is that FV-1 reverbs are a lot cleaner and organic sounding than the Belton brick— the Belton brick is a pt2399 module designed to sound like a spring reverb, so not only does it have the sorta lofi-isms of pt2399s which may be less than ideal for an acoustic player, but spring reverb in general tends to be less popular with acoustic players. The Spatialist has quite a few algorithms that would be great for an acoustic player (room; hall; chamber; cavern), and it would be easy enough for them to find the algorithm that works best for them, and leave the switch in that position. Of course, if you prefer, you could instead do a Pythagoras board and order a custom EEPROM with whichever three reverb algorithms you think they’d prefer (if those three happen to be Room, hall, and chamber- the first three algorithms of the Spatialist, you could save $4 by ordering the Spatialist EEPROM instead). One isn’t necessarily better than the other— just a matter of which type of reverb they might prefer.

Like the idea of: Thumb Sucker, Cepheid Chorus and Unison Double Tracker.

Definitely sounds like a good trio there!

What do you think about Maleficent Mids in place of Equilux?

I’m personally not big on the idea of that one. I can see it working well stacked with overdrives to change the general character of them, but a 1-band semi-parametric EQ is otherwise pretty limited in use for a standalone pedal imo. I’d say the 6-band EQ would be better for a general tone shaping tool— probably would recommend going with the 6-knob version over the slider version since the sliders are difficult to source currently; center detent pots would be a nice touch too. Otherwise, the pro filter may be good— someone who has built one can chime in on that.