Boss AD-3 Acoustic Instrument Effects Processor Reviews

The best acoustic Preamp I have found to date. I have used it for years playing live and it has been rock solid. Furthermore it again and again out classes LR Baggs and other preamps costing so much more. So much so that I have had many sound guys come up and ask what I was using and were totally blown away when they saw it was a Boss AD3. If you an find one buy it!

I've had one of these for at least eight years and it's my go-to rig any time I need to play an acoustic instrument. The EQ controls are responsive and musical. Some would complain about the lack of a footswitch for the reverb, but I'm more of a set it and forget it guy with reverb, I put it up about 11:00 and that works well for just about any room. The anti-feedback helps, especially with banjo, but I don't find the panic button to be all that responsive. Overall, this is a tremendous value and a very solid and versatile processor, I couldn't play without it. If I had one suggestion, it would be to mount the gain on top for those who switch acoustic instruments often.

Really widens the sound. Love the quality of the tone.

The good: Very responsive controls which allows fine tuning to fine your perfect sound (took me about 20 minutes with head phones to dial in mine). Reverb does a nice job and like that you turn the Chorus on and off on the fly. All metal solid construction. Setup and usage is a no brainer.

The bad: Dont get me wrong, I really like it and cant wait to hook it up at church. However, I have a fairly high end Taylor and it did take away someof the natural voice of the guitar and does give a bit of a processed voice.

The good far out ways bad and the ability to really dial in a beautiful full sound makes this unit a keeper.

Along with being a gigging weekend warrior, I play in our church's 35 piece orchestra. Decision was made to install Avion in-ear monitors for all of the rhythm section, so that amplifiers could be taken out of the pit (to help with house & TV audio issues). With my amp, went all of my effects. Didn't want to drag my gigging acoustic pedal-board set-up for every service, and started looking for an answer. This is it.

I play Godins (A5 Ultra & ACS SA). Put a TC tuner in front of the unit, and only a TRS to XLR adapter cable out the back going into the house system. The sound of my guitar in the house and monitor system truly amazed me. The tone shaping, reverb & chorus work great. The gain structure was near perfect going to the board. Even the engineers stated that of the 8 line-ins coming from our section, mine was the clearest & easiest to deal with.

The switchable output option is a big plus. It will work with either TRS or standard 1/4 outs. You can run stereo balanced, or in amp mode, sent a balanced out to the house and a separate line to an amp.

With the anti-feedback function, it will even allow me to bring a standard acoustic in without having to worry about it howling... could never do that before in close quarters with the amp.

The trend (that I am definitely going with) for many gigging acoustic players is simpler, lighter, quicker set-ups, but without compromising sound quality. This unit definitely fits that bill.

Absolutely no regrets to be had with this unit.

It did just what I hoped it would do. The chorus is subtle, the reverb quite nice. The feedback control feature works better that I thought it would. It should come with an adapter for the price. The batteries lasted one gig as I left the pedal switch on. Then I had to go buy an adapter. Glad I have it.

After receiving my Godin ACS from Sweetwater, I was having trouble getting a realistic acoustic sound through my guitar amps. My guitar tech, who led me to Godin in the first place, told me to give this pedal a chance. I did, and I have been very happy with the unit.
It sounded good even before I started to tinker with the settings, and it has just gotten better every since. Very direct simple operation, and the effects come on very subtly. It allows complete tonal control of the guitar and gave me the realistic "classical nylon" sound that I was looking for.

I've been looking for an affordable and easy to use acoustic processor and I believe I found it. I was looking for some good and solid basic processing, reverb and chorus. I don't need much, so I didn't want a lot of bells and whistles that I would not even use and have to pay for. This unit right out of the box delivered. I'm using a Martin D28 with a Woody Pickup and a Parker P8 with built in pickups. I'm plugging into a Bose PAS and using a Digitech VocalistLive2. Life doesn't get any better than this.
With a new set of strings, this setup really shimmers. I will be taking this out when I go to open mic sessions. Since this unit can run on batteries, I'll be able to plug in and have my sound wherever I go, even if I have to use the "house guitar". One thing I liked was, it had its own power switch. A lot of these type of units don't have a power switch and you had to physically unplug it. The sound is just amazing. I waited a long time to hear and feel it. You got to check this thing out if your in the market.

Also, while I'm at it, I can't say enough about Sweetwater and thier ability to continiously deliver excellent response and service. Keep it real guys.....