Baggs is still in business? He done good.
The manual actually says "The M1 Active will plug into practically anything with good results." Word, dude. They selling it, so they don't want it to make it sound bad, yet they don't tell you to do anything special, so it ain't fussy.
> unless "output impedance 800 ohms" tells us something
There's a whole morass of "common assumptions" hidden in this. But it has a battery and it evidently has an amplifier, probably a high-performance chip.
i.e.: it is not a naked Piezo which needs super-high Z loading (it may be a piezo but we deal only with its amplifier), or some funky magnetic which needs to be loaded to tame a winding resonance. It acts like a perfect voltage plus an 800 ohm resistor.
The most likely modern assumption is that you should load with "much higher than 800 ohms", probably meaning over 8,000 ohms. The lowest "instrument inputs" I know are 22K, and "line inputs" are generally over 10K often 22K. And by usual interfacing assumptions, going "lots higher" does no good and no harm. So "practically anything" seems to be covered.
If maximum POWER transfer were essential (basically if amplification were incredibly expensive), then the implication is that you load in 800 ohms (matching). However matching went out of fashion (except in legacy telephones) mid 20th century. Today we buffer and amplify. But just for thought: CR2032 at 3V and 135uA.... some assumptions what they do inside suggests that it can drive a 3K load to high output but a lower load may eat the battery. Due to the transient nature of guitar, this drain may be negligible. It is not impossible it will drive 800 ohms, but if "output impedance 800 ohms" is literally true, the voltage will be down to half. There's reasons to do that, but not for stage-work. Some further observations about low-power chips suggest that it "may" distort more with 800 ohms or less load... or then again it may not. Since very-low impedance inputs are rare, let's not fret.
It appears to be a well designed product. I assume it includes (in pickup or internal circuit) whatever tone-shaping is needed for "nice tone". It should play well through a flat amp.
Given a Fender Twin in good stock condition, the only thing I would do is set the tone controls "flat". Because the Twin was set up for snarly hard-body e-guitar, this means extreme settings.
Turn Mid to 10 (if no knob, change-up the fixed resistor from 6K-15K to like 20K or 50K). Turn Bass and Treb to zero. This gives the Twin a near flat response from jack to room-air. Play with that a long time and get used to it.
Now the reason we carry an amp is for "Bigger!" and "Brighter!" sound. For bigger, sneak-up the bass; for bright bring up the treb. However an honest acoustic in the fingers of a good player with a good pickup should not need a lot of either unless you want very exaggerated tone (which could perhaps be gotten easier with non-acoustic axes). Also the amount of boost you can stand will be limited by acoustic feedback through the guitar body to strings to pickup. If you really want max boom max zing you may have to instead sneak the Mid down. But it seems a shame to do that to a good acoustic instrument's central voice.
Topic: Acoustic thru twins normal channel mods? (Read 5186 times)