Rockman Acoustic Guitar Pedal

I had both the Dunlop model (blue button) and the SR&D model (grey button) and the both function the same except the Dunlop has plastic doors (which break easily) to access the two 9v batteries, whereas the SR&D version requires removing two screws and pulling off the bottom plate. The Dunlop version has an 18v jack and the SR&D version has a 12v jack.

I could not tell a difference between the Dunlop and the SR&D. They both sound very good... it is actually just the Clean2 sound from the Sustainor but with a treble and bass knob to give you a LOT more tonal variation.

Built like a tank.

I play all styles including classical. This thing improves my acoustic tone (especially on my mandolin), but is not entirely convincing on an electric. The SR&D model doesn't tend to sell for much more than the Dunlop, so get that one if possible for the sake of resale. However there is not enough (if any) difference between them to justify spending significantly more for the SR&D.

To the guy who gave a bad review for this product when he obviously had a defective unit... that's like going to the scrap yard to buy a BMW for $100 and then having such a bad experience with it that you try to convince someone not to buy a new BMW because the one you tried "sucked".

Volume, Top, Body, Gain - straight forward. Need to play around with top and gain, or you can get some screeching. I give it an 8 because you do need to play with the settings depending on the type and position of the pickups being used. Once dialed in, you just leave it alone.

I play a Mexican Fender Strat with standard neck and middle pickups, DiMarzio Fast Track 2 in bridge, going into Behringer Vampire Combo. I run the pedal in the send/return loop, and put the Vampire pre-amp in bypass (haven't found an amp model that works well yet - but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying) - able to get a very good representation of acoustic sounds using the neck and middle (or both) pickups. Bridge pickup with this pedal is too harsh and trebly for my tastes.

Unit is very quiet in both on and bypass mode - have used it direct to a mixer for recording and there's no audible noise above the standard 60-cycle hum from the single coil pickups.

Also have tried using it with my Rockman Sustainer, but haven't found a sound I like with it unless the Sustainer is in bypass as well.

Works and sounds great with Rockman Stereo Chorus.

Rock solid construction - quite heavy unit - metal housing on top and bottom with thick plastic sides. The two plastic caps that cover the battery compartment were gone when I bought it, but I think this has happened to every Rockman AGP - I use the proper 18V AC adaptor anyway, so I'm not concerned.

N/A - never needed to - living in Canada, it would probably be cheaper to buy another one off e-bay than to pack and ship back to Dunlop and pay the $50 to have it repaired.

I bought this pedal to allow me to switch on the fly between electric and acoustic sounds and it allows me to accomplish that quite well. It doesn't make my Strat sound like a Martin or Taylor, but for the playing I'm doing, it fits my needs perfectly. I've been playing on and off for 20 years. If the pedal was stolen, I'd definitely get another one - possibly an original SR&D one, they're supposedly much better than the Dunlop models.

I was looking for a pedal to add back the warmth missing from my acoustic/electric (Ovation Custom Legend). I had to do a bit of tweaking to get the sound I was looking for, but I had heard a demo of it on the exact guitar I play , so I knew the sound was in there. I use a setting of 7 on VOLUME, 4 on TOP, 6 on BODY and 3 on GAIN.

I wanted to speak up after seeing several negative reviews. I have played the pedal through a Roland JC 55 and through a PA and have no complaints using either setup. I get a warm, full, natural acoustic sound. Something I didn't hear out of other pedals I tried. I have also used it on recordings and it is extremely quiet.

It appears to be solid. I've been playing it for almost a year with no problems. I use an adapter, so batteries are not an issue.

I have never had to deal with support directly, although I found their FAQ (www.dunlopguitareffects.com) area helpful on setting up for the sound.

I play Eagle's style Contemporary Christian music in a lot of different settings (from small churches to outdoor gigs with 10,000 people) and the pedal has served its purpose well. I would replace it if it were stolen. I compared it with the Boss AC-2 and the Zoom 504 pedal and the Rockman was an easy pick over those two on the quality of its sound.

Very easy, indeed! You just plug your ACOUSTIC GUITAR into it and to the P.A. system or an amp (i used it once with a Solid state Fender Princeton Chorus- worked nicely) - You'll save a lot of work (and time)from your sound technician as he won't have to do anithing with your sound!!! It's ready to play!!! (I gave 9 'cause it uses 2 batteries of 9V)

10!! No hums at all..I use a Washburn D10 hand made acoustic guitar.. Very good sounding but his pre amp coul be better.. Don't care anymore, as long as i'm using this baby. I use a BOSS DD-3 for ambience after him..

10!! made of iron...

N/A

I use this pedal for my acoustic work (me and a harp player playng blues, jazz and brazilian popular music (MPB, you know, bossa nova and stuff). Fits very well. If i loose, i'll try to buy it again.

four knobs. volume, top(treble), body(bass), Gain. no biggie.

This pedal sounds GREAT! if only it worked half the time. i bought this from ebay for $45. it looked good out of the box, put in fresh batteries and i thought i got a great deal... until i plugged it in. it was horrible! all noise and static and strange sounds you'd swear was out of a sci-fi B-movie. Terrible terrible terrible. the volume knob made it worse so i set it to min. So, there i was, pissed. so i set it aside to decide it's fate some other time. this afternoon, i plugged it in again and low and behold it sounded Great! with the volume still at 0 the volume level was even with the bypassed signal of my strat. started playing with the settings (excluding volume coz i noticed that adding volume made the sound and noise return even on bypass) and got a pretty good amplified acoustic sound. i noticed it did suck some tone out of my vintage strat on bypass tho.

so i was happy again. then, i tried it again this evening and it sucked again!!!

i'm thinking maybe this unit was busted in the first place. hope i can have it fixed somewhere around here coz nobody'll be willing to buy this piece of $h!t!

i give it a 1 coz this particular unit may be defective. but, if it worked the way it's supposed to, i would have given it an 8. like i said... it sounds good if it works.

not reliable at all. mine is defective i think. i think it's old too. it doesn't have a plastic battery compartment you guys have been talking about. you have to remove 2 screws to remove the entire bottom plate to get to the batteries. the PCB indicates it's a 1 rev. 1994 too. damn.

i give it a 1 - i know it worked once.

trying... hoping.... i'll get back to you on this.

would have been great if it worked. if i don't get to have it fixed, next time, i'm buying the Boss AC-2 Acoustic Simulator. at least it's more likely to work.

I'm not easily impressed by most guitar effect components. At best, most sound like the other and so on. The ease of use on this pedal is basically straight forward, and easy to understand. Input from guitar, output to other effects or sound device(s). I have found the dials to be a little touchy, but nothing to difficult to learn from a little practice and tweaking. The sound is overall good, but I would not go as far as to say extremely fantastic. It can produce a good quality 'acoustic' sound, but nothing like the real thing. You can overload it on the bass side and get some interesting bass sounds, sometimes it will sound muddy, but just tweak a little and the sound quality does improve. I would say the overall ease of use is great, and sound quality depending on what you wish to produce or incorporate into your own sound is also great.

My basic set up is a 120 watt Crate stereo chorus head, two 4X12 cabinets with Pyle Drivers, all 'powered' by a rack of Rockman Modules, and a Les Paul Custom. I have ran the acoustic pedal by itself prior to the Crate with no other inline effects and achieved great sound. I have also ran the acoustic pedal prior to a full rack of other Rockman effects with good success. As you can see, I like the Rockman 'sound', and the wide range of other great sounds you can pull from these effects. I prefer to run the acoustic alone with either the Stereo Echo Delay, and or the Sustainer. I have not had the problem with noise coming from the acoustic pedal in either the on or bypass position. I have played an Ovation acoustic with this pedal and was pleased with the tone produced by pairing the two together.

This unit although made by Dunlop, has not failed to operate yet. It is built in a metal case, with the only weak links being the knobs because they are exposed to accidental kicking or damage when packing and moving the equipment. although this has not happened to me on this pedal, I have damaged some in the past by either stomping on the exposed knob, or smashing it in the equipment box. I prevent this from happening now by taking a little extra time to build a small plywood 'gigbox' to pack my other pedals in prior to packing in the foot pedal locker. Since this is the only acoustic pedal I have, I will naturally use it alone without a backup to rely on. Should I have trouble with it, I can just bypass it and use my other effects. I have used it with the supplied power cord, or with just the 2 9 volt batteries. One note of other weak link to this unit is the plastic ears on the battery compartments. It would have been nice to have another material instead of plastic, maybe aluminum covers with a screw head that a dime would fit into would have been a better choice.

Have not had to deal with the Dunlop customer support people as of yet.

I'm into what I like to call hard country to middle of the road rock. I stay away from the heaviest rock but do dabble in some Metallica, Scorps, ZZ. The sound I can pull from the acoustic pedal matches my sound. (To each his own, right?!) I have been 'playing' since I was about 14, and that was about 14 years ago. I say playing because I'm by no way diligent or financially inclined to play in anything other than local bands. I also play keyboards, brass, and percussion. I would say if this effect was stolen, I most likely would purchase another one. I like the ease of operation, it's comfortable to operate with the foot, and the indicator LEDs are handy also. I wish the knobs were a little more visible in dimmer light, but once again I have rigged a small light with another foot switch like the map lights in cars to help me see or find the settings on the pedal. I have also placed this pedal directly on my Crate head a couple times and operate with my hand. I really didn't do much comparison shopping before buying this pedal other than playing with it for about an hour in the music store, and I guess to be honest I bought it to see how or if the Dunlop folks have continued to carry on what I have come to expect from the Rockman line of equipment. As with all foot pedals I have found that some tend to grow legs and get in the way every once in awhile, but this pedal is the same slanted style case as the other Rockman foot pedals I have and fits nicely right beside them. I wish the pedal had reverb in it, but since most amps do, I can see why this unit doesn't have that feature. On another honest note, I think this acoustic pedal is a great piece of equipment to add to your arsenal. For those players just starting out, should you have just a few basic pieces of equipment, guitar and amp so to speak without any other effects, this would be a great effect to add inline and improve your overall sound. It really doesn't cost an arm and a leg either, and I think you will be pleased with the sound quality you can get.

Everyone can push a button, but this unit is way too difficult to find a "sweet spot". Probably because it has none.

I'm not sure what Rockman is trying to accomplish with this pedal. Right away, I noticed that implementing it caused a sharp unpleasant high metallic shreik. Trying hard to create girth by cutting the "top" and rising the "body", only creates a sharp unpleasant low metallic shreik....reverberating boom. No round or redeeming middle tones at all. Fair to say it is relatively quite when it's off,
which now is all of the time.

It does its job, paper weight and money sump quite nicely, thank you.

I have tried and tried to make this thing work. I play several types of music with different amps and many guitars, electric, acoustic, and archtops. I initially wanted a pedal to add life to an archtop to give it some subtle presence while comping 4 to the bar. No go.
I have tried to use it to give a solid body an acoustic sound to not have to change guitars for songs that ask for a more acoustic sound.
No go. Now I am looking for someone to take it from me. Make me an offer, please.

Simple setup. I haven't had it a long time, but I know how to get the sounds I want out of it. Just two of the four knobs will give you the "accoustic variation" of sounds that you want. I don't use the gain, so the only other knob is the volume... and we all know how to use that!

I'm using this directly into my Yorkville PA system and it sounds amazing. This is also the quietest effects unit I have ever had - bypassed or ON! (I can't figure out why one of the other guys reviewing this thing was complaining about noise). Well, I DO have a HUSH that is quieter ;-) I keep the gain down to the minimum because I don't like the twangyness that it creates for the type of music I play (classical and folk). However, I can understand why someone would want the gain depending on the style they play. It's great with an electric and phenominal with an accoustic. I have yet to try it with my electric bass, but I'm optimistic about its sound.

This thing is built with the quality that we've come to expect from Rockman. It weighs quite a bit for its size...all metal casing... built like a Morely! As long as power is running to it, I'll expect it to work without hassle. The battery cover tabs broke off of mine (I bought it that way), but from what I hear, they have a tendancy to do that... I don't use batteries anyways.

Never called. I don't see the battery covers as being a big enough deal to replace them.

With this thing I play classical and folk type music. I've been playing for ten years now. I've got some other Rockman effects and I like them too. My only complaint is that it is an 18 Volt unit instead of the standard 9V, so you'll have to do a bit of searching for a suitable adapter (and pay a bit more). If you use batteries, you'll be paying for two batteries instead of one. However, those are minor annoyances in comparison to the sound I get. The only thing I think it SHOULD have on there is a reverb. However, it would be really cool to have a chorus and echo on there too...of course not like their 1/2 rack versions, but simple like the effects on their headphone amps (Guitar Ace, X100 etc).

Knobs: Body, Top, Gain, Volume. Supposed to simulate the wood type and body size of a bunch of acoustic guitars. Sounds like they're simulating broken, tinny out-of-tune guitars instead.

If you had the ultimate guitar/rack/amp setup in the world, anything you could imagine, this pedal is guaranteed to ruin it with the stomp of that big blue button. A huge amount of noise is inherent in it. Just having it in your signal chain results in a signal loss, even if it's off. Every sound is horribly trebly. There was just ONE setting I ever found on this pedal that I liked: I got it to make my Strat Plus sound like a bass, which was pretty cool. The Gain knob sucks, don't use the gain on this pedal. Don't use this pedal period. It ruins good tone and incorporates sucky tone no lie. You will suck with this pedal. I don't know what it will do for a real acoustic guitar, however.

Seems sturdy enough, metal shell.

This pedal is a waste of time and money if you're using it in an electric guitar setup. Even a great tube amp (Vibro-King) couldn't help it. Noisy, way too trebly, metallic-sounding, with no presence or depth, this pedal makes a nice tone turn two-dimensional, flat, and bland. I strongly urge anyone considering this pedal to look elsewhere.

4 knobs: Volume, Top (Treble), Body (Bass), Gain. Just plug it in and play with the dials until it sounds good. The thing takes two 9-volt batteries which are a pain to replace. The battery holders are kind of hard to get back into place. If it weren't for those battery holders, I'd give it a 10.

The box makes my guitar sound very pleasant. I don't think this sound can be duplicated with a parametric EQ. My guitar sounds a little like an accoustic, especially the bottom four strings. But the unit has a very nice sound, somewhat like a jazz guitar, or an old hollow-body electric. It has a nice bottom end to it and doesn't sound mushy. There is no noise. You must try this pedal. It sounds even better when used with a chorus.

It's made of metal and it seems solid. I don't know about the battery holders, though. They're made of plastic and they are a pain to mess with. I just got mine, but it seems like I'll have it for quite a number of years.

Never dealt with them.

This box sounds great. Put a chorus pedal after it to give your sound a nice shimmer. It sounds somewhat like an accoustic, but the sound is really nice. I would recommend this pedal to anybody looking for a nice finger-picking sound. It also works great with chords, too. Go try one!