Overdrive for acoustic guitar

Quad Cortex
1

Has anyone managed to come up with a nice soliton for an overdrive to use with an acoustic guitar on the QC?

2

What are you currently using to achieve this outside of the quad cortex?

If it’s a pedal, you can capture it on the QC and use that same setup.

If not, what kind of sounds are you looking to achieve?

3

Ah, that’s a good point about capturing.

Generally I play electric guitar, and that gives me a far greater array of sounds of course. Occasionally for a ‘coffee shop’ sort of gig, so just me on guitar and a singer, we use the QC for everything guitar, vocals and backing. But an electric guitar can be a bit of overkill in this case, so I often use an acoustic.

Some of the songs I need to solo over a loop however, so I would like a boost / OD of some sort to push the acoustic a little bit (increase volume and gain/sustain) for the solos. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not talking Malmsteen-esque solos on the acoustic, just very straightforward stuff, but I feel the guitar needs something to push it a bit to make the solos stand out

Hope that all makes sense

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4

I had a similar use case, many acoustic songs and one or two that needed an overdrive.
I found that I could use my electric guitar presets with my acoustic guitar relatively well. Sound was ok.
But feedback was terrible. I needed to almost shut down my monitor speakers to be able to play.

5

Makes perfect sense. Depending on your guitar/pickup/piezo set up, I’d start with a Klon style, or tube screamer with the gain nearly off (obviously as just a flavored* volume/mid boost). Obviously as @Andyjcp noted, feedback will be your biggest limiter.

  • I hate the term “transparent overdrive”. it’s overly miss-applied, and just silly. I added a pedal because I want it to change something. If we’re getting technical, “translucent” would be the more appropriate word choice.
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6

I’ve got a preset for solo gigs which has two ‘boost’ pedals on it for this exact use.

Myth Drive set Gain 0 Treble 5.5 Level 2.3
Greer Lightspeed Cleanish Boost (Capture) set Gain -6.2 B 0 M 0 T 0 Volume -4.8

I can’t upload the patch to the cloud as its using a Magnatone capture that isn’t available anymore.

7

Unless you’re looking for a more “electric” sound, have you tried boosting with a compressor block? I find the 1176 block works well on acoustic. It can boost your signal while adding sustain but it still sounds like an acoustic. As Andy mentioned, feedback can be a problem.

8

Sorta like this pedal which adds “saturation”?
Align Series Session Acoustic Pedal — LR Baggs

Or real overdrive distortion?