Recently Bob Taylor of Taylor guitars helped Gearwire out with a series on acoustic amplification. Taylor likes the Bose L1 system. He detailed the reasons and then referred us to Taylor's Brian Swerfeger for some more ideas on acoustic amps.

"I'm a big fan of the Bose as well - it just sounds the best and delivers all of the personality of the guitar without imposing any additional tone of its own," says Swerfeger.

But the Bose system was not the only recommendation he had.

"Acoustic amps on the other hand all have their own 'sound.' The SWR is the best of the bunch when you just want a small amp -- it's a little boxy sounding, but gets the job done." says Swerfeger.

The SWR California Blonde II has a 12 inch Celestion speaker and 160 watts of acoustic power. It is a versatile amp you can use live [solo or with a band] or in the studio. The amp is 25" tall and 15" wide. It weighs about 50 pounds. The frequency response is 30 Hz to 16 KHz and you can get 200 watts with an 8 Ohm extension cabinet. These amps list for $999.99 but you can get one for around $700.

Another recommendation for SWR acoustic amps comes from amp maker Ben Fargen of Fargen Amplification. He also has another trick up his sleeve to turn a variety of old amps into acoustic amps.

"The SWR Strawberry Blonde sounds nice but any good older fender tube amp or clean amp can be made to sound real nice with a little trick," says Fargen. You take a 10 meg resistor and wire it in line with the input jack of the amp to correct the impedance mismatch that happens between an acoustic pickup and the amp or even a PA input -- that shitty hi end buzz you normally hear is ultra high end square wave distortion and sounds like ass. Add the 10 meg resistor and it takes all that away."

Fargen says that it is all about mating the acoustic pickup with an input it "wants to see"--which is a much higher resistance than what an electric guitar "wants to see."

More on acoustic amps soon.