Vox VT15

I've been searching for months to find the right peice (or peices) of equipment to make my accoustic sound good live & loud, I play folk/weird stuff, like Pages "Black Mountain Side". I have a piezo under saddle pickup on an old accoustic (suzuki violin co. copy of a gibson, the one with the dove on the scratch plate). I play it through a PA. I'm new to the world of piezos and accoustic amplification, and what frustrated me on my search was the "quack" of the piezo and the severe lack of that accoustic sparkle or life. The aura was my last ditch effort at finding my live guitar sound, and I must say I'm very impressed. True, there is a little noise, but the sonic life that I've heard the thing produce so far is quite good in my books. It has that "real" sparkle that I was searching for, even the sound of my fingers draging on the strings sounds more life like. Some of the presets are a little top end heavy, but are not outrageously bad, and can be adjusted. Even if you want that piezo sound, you can select a straight piezo setting & choose no digital blending. The only other equipment that impressed me was Fenders' surround sound accoustic amp, with a fishman preamp, but the aura is much more maleable and a quater of the price. To me, a middle weight performer, it sounds good.

Its made out of thick metal, the jacks are very sturdy, and its quite small, and much lighter than what I imagined. Aye, I'd use it at a gig, its probably going to end up being the heart of my set up.

This peice of equipment has really got me excited about playing, where as before I was never really to happy about how the guitar was sounding. For its size, fairly competitive price, build, ease of use & sound, its well worth a look see. I would replace it in an instant. As I stated before, because its what my guitar is played through, how it sounds is paramount, this is a very important part of my set up. I no longer have to whinge and moan about how crap my guitar sounds (my guitar has an excellent natural sound, so its not like making a peice of crap sound good), or having to worry about mics or any of that. I play stuff like Led Zep, Tool, The Tea Party, Pink Floyd, Loreena Mckennitt, America, to my ears it sounds good. I actually read these reviews before purchasing mine, and the love/hate rate is about fifty fifty, so I was taking a bit of a gamble, but I'm a very happy camper.