[Kevin Dale]

I play an Alverez AJ60SC plugged into a Mackie DFX 12 mixer, powered by Peavey 1200 and into Peavey 115(s). I plug the guitar directly into the board with no pre amp. I have no experience with a preamp but I am thinkin of experimenting. Can anyone with experience tell what I am missing?

[dadfad]

I have an AJ60 too (no electronics though) and it's a pretty good guitar for the money. Yours probably has the MKII 600 System Alvarez has been using for a couple of years. As far as on-board electronics go, that's not a bad system and already has a pretty decent pre-amp with quite a few tweaks. If you add another pre-amp you could probably "tweak the tweaks" a little more but I don't think you'd get a lot of additional stuff from using one. (And of course just how much if any would depend on the pre-amp you choose.) I'd say you might just want to take your guitar to a shop and try it with a couple of pre-amps to see if you get much difference. You could try it through any amp there just to see what kinds of variations you might get.

Maybe someone else here can give you a little more information than I can. A couple of my acoustic guitars have electronics and I'll use them sometimes, but generally I prefer to play guitar-to-mic through a PA whenever possible so I'm no acoustic amplification whiz or anything.

[Kevin Dale]

I have an AJ60 too (no electronics though) and it's a pretty good guitar for the money. Yours probably has the MKII 600 System Alvarez has been using for a couple of years. As far as on-board electronics go, that's not a bad system and already has a pretty decent pre-amp with quite a few tweaks. If you add another pre-amp you could probably "tweak the tweaks" a little more but I don't think you'd get a lot of additional stuff from using one. (And of course just how much if any would depend on the pre-amp you choose.) I'd say you might just want to take your guitar to a shop and try it with a couple of pre-amps to see if you get much difference. You could try it through any amp there just to see what kinds of variations you might get.

Maybe someone else here can give you a little more information than I can. A couple of my acoustic guitars have electronics and I'll use them sometimes, but generally I prefer to play guitar-to-mic through a PA whenever possible so I'm no acoustic amplification whiz or anything.

Thanks for the information. It does really help. Yes the guitar has the 600T system. Sometimes I play pretty hard and I get almost a clipping effect or something where the guitar will cut out and fade back in. As long as I continue to play softer, the problem seems to not exist. Touble is when I am into it who remembers to play soft. I was simply wondering if a pre amp would help. Not sure how it would but thas why I chimed in here. I play alot of blues. rock blues, country blues you name it. And when I have the E tuned down sometimes I get to hammerin on it. Thanks for the help.

[ninjato]

I have an AJ60 too (no electronics though) and it's a pretty good guitar for the money. Yours probably has the MKII 600 System Alvarez has been using for a couple of years. As far as on-board electronics go, that's not a bad system and already has a pretty decent pre-amp with quite a few tweaks. If you add another pre-amp you could probably "tweak the tweaks" a little more but I don't think you'd get a lot of additional stuff from using one. (And of course just how much if any would depend on the pre-amp you choose.) I'd say you might just want to take your guitar to a shop and try it with a couple of pre-amps to see if you get much difference. You could try it through any amp there just to see what kinds of variations you might get.

Maybe someone else here can give you a little more information than I can. A couple of my acoustic guitars have electronics and I'll use them sometimes, but generally I prefer to play guitar-to-mic through a PA whenever possible so I'm no acoustic amplification whiz or anything.

Thanks for the information. It does really help. Yes the guitar has the 600T system. Sometimes I play pretty hard and I get almost a clipping effect or something where the guitar will cut out and fade back in. As long as I continue to play softer, the problem seems to not exist. Touble is when I am into it who remembers to play soft. I was simply wondering if a pre amp would help. Not sure how it would but thas why I chimed in here. I play alot of blues. rock blues, country blues you name it. And when I have the E tuned down sometimes I get to hammerin on it. Thanks for the help.

No another preamp won't help. It sounds like you have an issue w/ your onboard pre-amp.