Do I Need Direct Boxs For Acoustics? M20d

[JeffersteinVS]

25 foot 1/4  cable  into a acoustic with a 9v battery powered internal pre amp.and plugging into the m20d in of the 12 xlr- 1/4 inch jacks . im thinking mic level would be sent to the mixer via the internal preamp on the acoustic , but not sure able cable length , anyone have any thoughts?

[SiWatts69]

At 25 feet, you are unlikely to have problems. Certainly, the signal should be strong enough. The question would be whether you get any interference from other nearby cables and or general electrical equipment/transmitters.

 

Personally anything over 5m (about 15feet) I'd be tempted to run a DI box and convert to a balanced signal. All the signal cabling in my rig is 10m (30 foot) but with the exception of keyboards (which we run to the desk via a 2 channel DI box) it is all balanced signals anyway (mic on guitar amp and an XLR DI output on the bass stack.

[dboomer]

Depends on your tolerance for problems. You'll probably get away with it 99 times out of a hundred.

 

Feelin lucky? :)

 

Without it you will have some high frequency loss and likely some extra noise. And maybe a taxicab someday.

[aasoundco]

will the acoustic take a trs cable it will say in your manual

[joecozzi]

JeffersteinVS,

You mentioned that you suspect that your guitar's preamp delivers a Mic level signal.That means it may already be a balanced output, in which case a direct box will not be necessary and as "aasoundco" mentioned, you would just need to get a TRS-XLR cable. If the preamp only delivers a line level signal, however, for optimal audio I would recommend the use of a direct box at that cable length.