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Featured Question - March 6, 2000

Question Submitted by: Peter Black

Dear Guitar Talk, I'd like to get a better reverb sound for my acoustic guitar. I currently use a Lexicon MPX 100 for my overall PA, but I get the sense that a separate effect dedicated to the guitar would bring an improvement. Any suggestions? Or if anyone knows about the Lexicon MPX 100 any tips how on to use it more effectively?. Thanks!

Response by: Alex Bevan

I have an MPX 100 and the rich plate works wonderfully on my old Guild guitar. I set the effect send for the guitar to have just a little more "tail" than the vocal. Seems to work for me. Probably the one piece of gear that adds to my guitar sound more than the MPX 100 is the ART tube preamp/compressor that warms up the signal from the Fishman matrix transducer. Most of this is voodoo so go with what sounds good to you and just have fun playing. alex bevan low tech and proud

Response by: Chris Proctor

It would be a sonic improvement to have separate effects for the guitar alone. Vocals, talking, and other instruments each have their own dynamics, and if the guitar is a main part of the show it should be reverbed separately. As in most reverb devices, the Lexicon offers editing of some of the parameters, but I don't know exactly which ones. If you can do it, pick a small or medium hall program, try about 1.2-1.6 seconds of decay time, about 20 milliseconds of predelay, and roll a little of the high frequencies off. If you can't get at the high frequencies with the Lexicon, return the reverb into a channel of your mixer rather than into an effects return, and masssage the reverb sound with the (3?) band EQ of the channel until it sounds good to you. Chris Proctor

Response by: Dr. Toby Mountain

Sorry I couldn't come up with a better answer for you. I just don't know enough about live sound, but I do know that a separate reverb for the guitar would work better. There are so many decent cheap boxes out there...you probably know of some yourself. Northeastern Digital