Can you use a compression pedal with an acoustic guitar?

The Short Answer. A compressor pedal is ideal for an acoustic guitar as it ‘compresses’ the dynamic range closer together lowering the transience and stabilizes the volume level.

How much should I compress acoustic guitar?

In most cases, I typically use subtle bus compression when working with acoustic guitars. Moderate compression can help glue each of the different mics together and create more consistent dynamics. Start with a slow attack time—typically around 10-25 ms—to help accentuate the attack of each transient.

Should I compress my guitars?

With metal guitars, compression is more important than ever when it comes to consistency and glue. While other guitars are susceptible to some large dynamic variations, a lot of these distorted guitars have already been crushed by the amp/amp sim far more than your standard compressor plugins ever could.

Can you plug an acoustic guitar directly into a PA?

Having said that, the majority of acoustic guitar amps will feature a DI output, which means that you can plug them into a PA system if you need to. This means that you can still easily get a consistent and malleable sound, while projecting more volume to fill a larger venue.

Can I plug my acoustic guitar directly into a mixer?

Can’t I just plug my acoustic guitar directly into the mixer’s channel? Technically you can do this, but even with an onboard preamp, this would be an unbalanced signal. It’s better to send a balanced signal through XLR, which means we’d at least recommend a basic DI box.

How to compress acoustic guitars?

Apart from common ways of using compression on acoustic guitars, experts commonly use a few advanced techniques. You can route your acoustic guitar track through the separate track and apply compression to that track. Then the original track can be mixed with the processed one by staging its gain.

What are the best Compressor settings for acoustic guitar?

One thing to remember is that there are no universal compressor settings for acoustic guitar that could be applied to any track and sound good. It is impossible to record acoustic guitars with the same dynamic and levels twice, let alone always.

What are the attack and release settings for acoustic guitar compression?

The attack and release settings for acoustic guitar compression will depend on the sound that you are going for. For example, solo finger style guitar should be much more dynamic (aka less compressed) than acoustic chords strumming in a rock song that includes drums and electric guitar.

Can you send acoustic guitar signal through a hardware compressor?

Firstly, you can send your acoustic guitar signal through the hardware compressor before it goes to your DAW. It will most likely save some precious time during the mixing stages. The downside of that is if you make a mistake setting up your compressor, you cannot change that while mixing.