I was looking for a small acoustic amp to have something to practice using my loop pedal at home, without being forced to set up my entire PA system. Plus, since some of the venues I play in don't have monitors, I was looking for something I could use as a monitor. Ideally, it would be a DI out for both the vocal and the guitar channel, giving the sound guy to have different mix for the room to the settings on the amp. Added bonus would be something portable.
In comes the Boss Acoustic Singer Live. This little amp basically ticked all those boxes, and comes with some added features as well, for a very decent price indeed. In addition to the things I was looking for, it packs a vocal harmonizer, a looper, and some nice effects.
The effects are as decent as you would expect from Boss. A very nice, lush reverb, which goes into silly levels if you turn it all the way up, but is very useful when used in moderation. The delays on the vocals and the chorus on the guitar are not really my thing, but certainly provide some interesting options.
The vocal harmonizer is a fun thing to play with. If you play standard chords, it works surprisingly well in detecting the major and minor thirds in the chord to determine if it needs to add a major or minor harmony. The downside for me is that I play in DADGAD and use a lot of suspended chords. On those, it tends to get confused and the result is... less than pleasing. Still, if you give its use some thought, you can really enrich your sound with it.
The looper is a basic one, one channel, no undo function. It is fun to practice with, but compared to my Boss RC-30 loop pedal, it is a bit lacking. Of course, it isn't a real fair comparison and a built-in looper is a nice thing to have. It basically gives me a third channel for loops in addition to my pedal, so more options!
The sound of the amp is just surprisingly good. I was afraid the small speaker would dissapoint me and that I should have opted for the pro version of this amp which has a bigger frame and speaker. But this little thing really amazed me with its rounded sound. There actually is a nice amount of low end in this thing. The acoustic resonance options add some different flavours, made to enhance the sound of piezo pickups, but even without it, my acoustic sounded great (and I am normally not that impressed with its piezo). Plenty of volume too for such a little thing.
All in all, this thing was a great buy, a lot of options but it really shines in the most important side of an amp: it sounds superb!
