Any road-tested electric guitar player will attest that the struggle to achieve that perfect tone in a live setting is never-ending. But ask acoustic guitar players about stage tone, and you will hear a very different story. For them, it’s not about reaching perfection; it’s a perpetual exercise in sonic troubleshooting, and sometimes it’s about simply surviving to fight another day.

Whether solo or in a band context, the world of amplified acoustic guitar can be a minefield. I’ve stepped on several, myself. At one gig, I plugged my Dean cutaway straight into my Fender Deluxe, tweaked the on-board EQ to what I thought was nirvana, and set the guitar aside. When I picked up the guitar mid-set for a series of breather pieces, I was inaudible, smothered by bass and keys. I went for the volume knob to try to cut through, and was greeted by skull-shattering feedback that sent our audience scurrying for cover.

The experience sent me scurrying for cover, too. From that day on, for songs that begged for acoustic lilt, I’d lean on clean Telecaster tones instead. Playing acoustic on stage just wasn’t worth the time, or the anxiety.

Enter the Venue D.I., the closest thing to a security blanket that I’ve ever experienced in a stomp box. It’s time to tame that acoustic!




The Venue D.I. impresses right out of the box. It comes packaged in its own lightweight black shock case – a handy feature since most players won’t Velcro this unit to a pedal-board – and the case will fit neatly into most gig bags.

The unit itself is rock-solid and sleek at 2.2 lbs. Rubber pads on the bottom hold tight to any surface and ensure that the box stays put, even under the heaviest foot. Matte-bronze metal frames flank a sturdy sheet metal control panel that’s conveniently recessed, so you can’t accidentally throw off your settings with an errant toe-tap.



Controls, while abundant, are mostly simple and intuitive. Dual footswitches (mute/tune and a 9db boost) are beefy, tough, and rattle-free. Interfaces are all air-tight, and include an XLR output port that will be popular with the garden party set who’s often asked to leave the amp at home and play through a P.A. Those same folks will also appreciate the unusually bright tuner display, which can be clearly seen in the brightest light of day (yes, I checked).



To set the hurdle as high as I could for the Venue D.I., I introduced it into the same feedback-prone rig I described above.

The first thing the manual tells you to do – even before you power up your amp – is set the gain level. I followed these instructions, but found that I had to bury the gain as high as possible to even register at my guitar’s standard volume setting. In fact, I had to turn the guitar up to about 5/10 before I was able to peel back the unit’s gain setting and register the prescribed level for my instrument. I knew I was going to feed back as soon as I plugged in, and I was right.

Not a problem. From there, I dialed off amp volume until the neighbor’s dog stopped howling, and with a tolerable dose of feedback still ringing out, went to the control for the Garrett Null anti-feedback notch filter. As I slowly turned the notch knob clockwise to meet the offending frequency range, the feedback simply...stopped. And when I restored the volume setting on my amp, the feedback stayed where it belonged - that is, gone.

All that was left was clean, confident acoustic guitar tone, waiting to be massaged into my clean, confident acoustic guitar tone.

After doing a brief "Happy Dance", I engaged the EQ controls. Perhaps the best idea the minds at L.R. Baggs had was to offer its users both low-mid and hi-mid adjustment, because acoustic guitar tones are so variable across the middle range. For example, my own instrument has deadened considerably in the low-mid range over the years, owing to climate, storage and other factors. The Venue D.I. allowed me to isolate and elevate the low-mids without saturating the hi-mids in cloying brightness, and let me access a fullness of tone I never thought I could access from this guitar again.

After spending a half hour making minor adjustments, it’s hard to imagine fiddling with any of the settings down the road, except to account for the atmosphere in a given room.



In short, the Venue D.I. was made to solve problems that plague acoustic players who spend most of their time in other idioms. If you’re a professional singer-songwriter who makes his living playing acoustic guitar, chances are you’ve got a cherished, high-end acoustic amp with D.I. capabilities – and even a rack-mounted EQ – that already solves these problems. For you, the Venue D.I. is probably redundant.

But if you want your acoustic guitar to cut through cleanly in a noisier setting, or overcome battlefield conditions like tone-deaf sound guys or P.A. speakers riddled with craters, the Venue D.I. will be a formidable addition to your toolkit. You’ll sound better, and you may just sleep better, too!