best amp for pedal harp?

[Paul and Brenda]

We use the Cube with our lever harps, Rees Grand Harpsicles.

[Sylvia]

I think I asked you this before on a different thread, but what kind of mike (mikes) do you use with the CUBE?

[Paul and Brenda]

Don’t think it’s the 40, it doesn’t say, but it is the Roland Cube Street.

[sandra-salstrom]

As of today I’m in the market for the whole kit and caboodle and also want light & wireless. I’ve never had my own amplification but need to find something during the sales this weekend. The Roland CUBE 40XL looks good to me. Can you use a wireless mic with it?
A venue I once played set me up with a wireless mic and a Pyle Pro. Don’t know anything about it except everyone said it sounded good.
Sylvia, did you come up with a solution?

[Sylvia]

Not yet.

[Paul and Brenda]

We have not used wireless mics, but the amp has 1/4 inch and XLR inputs.

[sandra-salstrom]

I looked at the Roland Street amp today but it’s 5 watts. I need something that will boost my sound above the chatter of cocktail hours, of dinner talk, etc when there’s around 100+ people. Also looked at the Roland 40XL and was about to buy it when I went to the inner-room for acoustic instruments at Guitar Center and listened to the amps in that room. I told them I wanted to spend “close to nothing” and they brought their house-brand amplifier into the room, an “Acoustic” amp. It is an Acoustic AB50 50watt 1X10 acoustic bass amplifier with no bells or whistles, only EQ (yay) for $149 (just now on sale) and it made the guitar sound totally clean and just… well, amplified… just like itself. I liked it better than the $700 Fishman amp. So I said “taken”, got it because I was enthusiastic about the sound, got it out of the car and realized it’s 33 pounds. Oh well. I have a small dolly I’ll put it on; was hoping for something I could just sling over my shoulder (one can wish…). Now for a microphone. I found an instrument maker (violins etc) here in Houston who amplifies his instruments. He said he’ll ponder harp/ research it and give me a recommendation on the microphone. I don’t want to drill a hole in the harp–I looked at the Schatten Pickup at schattendesign.com I’ll find out how it goes next Saturday at the 2 hour cocktail party for 200-300 people!Any suggestions are warmly welcomed.

[patricia-jaeger]

Neither do I, but when an important harpmaker drills

[Sylvia]

I’ve studied some more, and I think the Roland CUBE 40 is for the electric guitars, and it sort of looks like the Rolands are designated AC for acoustic…which I think means that you don’t plug the instrument into it…so maybe an AC would be the right kind.

[tony-morosco]

Acoustic amplifiers are amplifiers designed for amplifying acoustic instruments as opposed to electric.

But when you get to the nitty gritty what it is really referring to is the kind of pickup it is designed to work best with.

Acoustic instruments can use various types of pickups. Some are basically flat dynamic microphones stuck to the inside of the instrument, others are more sophisticated such as piezo pickups, which are pickups that use pressure sensitive crystals that have an electron flow across them that can be “picked up” and conveyed to an amplifier to be amplified.

Amps designed to work with “electric” instruments are geared more towards working best with electromagnetic pickups. These are pickups that create a magnetic field. The metal strings of the instrument distort the field as they vibrate through it, and this creates an electrical current that fluctuates at the same rate as the strings vibrations, and is again conveyed to the amplifier to be amplified.

It is certainly possible to use an amp designed for electric instruments with an acoustic instrument, and an amp designed for acoustic instruments with electric instruments. It is just that the acoustic amp is made to work with the pickups typically used on acoustic instruments better, and to re-create the sound in a more natural way. “Natural” isn’t so much a concern when playing fully electric instruments.

So it’s really about the pickups on the instrument. That is why my Camac electroharp, which is technically an electric instrument because it is solid bodied and doesn’t have a sound box and only makes any real sound when it is plugged in, I find works best with an acoustic amp. That’s because, since it doesn’t use metal strings, it doesn’t use electromagnetic pickups. It uses piezo pickups just like most acoustic guitars with built in pickups use, and the amp I use primarily is designed specifically to work best with piezo pickups. It’s not really an acoustic instrument, but it uses the same pickups as one, so I

[Sylvia]

Um…I use a microphone…nothing stuck to the harp.

[tony-morosco]

Again, you can use microphones with any kind of amp you want, but for best sound they work best with PA systems, not amps. And you also have to consider the type of microphone you are using. Dynamic mics are simple and just plug and play with possibly the use of CEQ in the signal chain or built into the PA system. Condenser mics need phantom power that may or may

[Sylvia]

You get way too technical for me.

[tony-morosco]

Yes, a microphone will work with any amp so long as it either doesn’t need external power, or you have a phantom power source for it. It just will sound better with some than others.

But a PA doesn’t have to be a house system. There are portable PA systems.

The Fender Passport portable PA systems are all really great in my opinion. Great clarity, and they range in size from smaller than a marshal stack to the same size as a smaller guitar amp.

The downside is that PA systems will tend to cost more than amps of comparable size and wattage. That’s because they tend to have built in multi channel sound boards, and some can even record, have USB ports and other extras. It all depends on the system.

[onita-sanders]

Hello,

Did not have the time here at the library computers to read the entire thread. Just wanted to pass on what my experiences have been.

[Author]

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