IK Multimedia iRig Acoustic Stage Guitar, Black

Extremely pleased with the unit, the sound is great. The unit fits onto the the guitar strap or a waist belt easily and the actual pick-up fits onto my Taylor six string and Yamaha 12 string with ease. I have slight concerns about the about the durability of the pick-up wire, but if handled with care it should be fine. The unit and pick-up fit neatly into a robust gig box, further I have found that Duracell AA batteries are the best in terms of battery life. Overall a boon to the gigging acoustic guitarist.

Check that you receive one with a RED tone light, not a green one. I bought one that had a green light and it wasn't until I compared it to my 2 bandmates', whose had red lights, that I realised how lacking my version was. The lesser green-light version has a lower volume and an overall thin tone compared to the red-light one. I conducted a thorough A/B recording test, swapping the microphones over and using the same volume, mix and tone settings. The difference was shocking. Of course, it could be that I had a faulty one, but it seems too much of a coincidence the my friends' red-light versions both sound the same and my green-light one sounded awful.Other than that, these are fantastic bits of kit. Really everything I and my band needed to be able to perform live with warm, natural guitar sounds. I use mine to produce great-sounding demo recordings too, without the need to mic-up properly or use my quacky, built-in electro-acoustic pickup.1 star deducted purely because, if I'm right about the red vs green light versions, IK Multimedia should really have issued a recall for the first model. It really is that much worse.

Item arrived very quickly. very well packaged. Tried it on 6 + 12 string Guitars and works perfectly on both, so much easier for me to record onto my Micro Boss, exactly what I was looking for

Ok I should start by saying I have 2 of these but they are not perfect. So why do I have 2? Playing live is difficult at the best of times and with ukuleles it’s made worse by sound engineers who think they know that a ukulele should sound all top end and thin. Options are a piezo under saddle pick up into an effects loop then DI straight into a desk, no amp. An active pickup system with a ugly box in the side of your ukulele (my preference although not in one of my lovely instruments or this unit. I like the ugly pickup preamp combo because it’s simple. You can control the sound and volume and I always take a Uke that does that. Simple. But I don’t much like the acoustic sound.So that leaves me with this IK Multimedia Acoustic Stage. It requires no drilling holes in my Ukes and sounds ok, but can howl with feedback. Ok it’s got a feedback suppression button that’s good but not perfect. I have learnt to back the volume off to around 50%, use the Warm Nylon setting and be careful which way I face to avoid ear splitting anti social feedback. The button that cancels it works ok at low volume but less well in a large auditorium. It’s a great idea, and can reduce the frequencies causing the feedback but it’s not a ‘cure all’ solution that I thought it might be.The principle is simple in that it’s a small microphone rather than a pickup or piezo strip. It does a good job of amplifying the ‘tone’ of the instrument. So why 3 stars. I need to find out how to get around the feedback issues, I like the sound it makes. The controls are both minimal but effective with a volume that can set and then pushed into the unit to keep it out of the way. The tone controls are simply a button with 8 pre set settings and again that’s all fine. It replicates the sound of your instrument and the tone shapes it a little. It has USB connectivity so another positive and a belt clip that’s a bit naff. So one last negative and at the moment it’s not causing any issues but may do. The cable from the microphone to the unit is very thin and looks fragile. When I used it on stage, I kept catching it accidentally and although it didn’t break, it felt like it would. Hence the reason I own 2 of these. I take more than I need to any gig, 3 different ukuleles with different pickups, so the sound man can have something to work with, 4 leads, 2 iRigs, 3 spare cables, a set of strings.Fix that flimsy lead with a proper quarter inch Jack and they have a potential winner

This is the best thing out there to amplify your acoustic or classical guitars. If like me you pick your acoustic and classical/flamenco guitars for their tone you want that tone to project through the speaker, not a magnetic pickup sound or clacking sound of a piezo.The iRig acoustic stage uses a highly sensitive digital MEMS condenser mic that clips to the edge of your soundhole or f hole on an archtop.It comes with an preamp with 3 steel string EQ presets and 3 nylon string presets. It also has feedback cancellation and it can be calibrated to be optimised for your guitar.It has aux in to plus in a piezo or soundhole pickup and has a USB socket to hook up for recording.The sound coming out of the speaker is the sound of the air moved by your guitar - a truly outstanding product.Here is a demo:https://youtu.be/9LGwsS6ZavQ

Didn’t work. Sent it back.

This clip on microphone produces a good acoustic tone without being vulnerable to extraneous noise from the top (e.g. as the lead slips over it, hands touching), and is easily truer in tone than piezos. There is a range of usable tone variants and a feedback cancel button that actually works. Overall, a viable alternative to expensive mic/pickup combos. Thsi would be a 5 star rating if the build quality was better. In particular, the lead from the mic to the preamp is very, very thin. They would have done better to have had a short lead out from the mic to a standard jack socket, leaving the user to connect up to the preamp with a standard lead, which is what I may convert it to.

Great sound from classical and acoustic guitar with no need to make any alterations