Mooer Acoustikar

Have you ever happened to play a song that would have been great with an acoustic guitar, but space and time limitations only let you bring an electric and a small pedalboard? This is when the Acoustikar comes in handy.

Mooer is famous for making very good clones of famous pedals at a lower price and in little space. This small, yellow, Twinkie-shaped box colors the sound of your electric guitar to emulate either a standard dreadnought, a jumbo, or an electro-acoustic with piezo pickup. The controls are intuitive, the main one controlling the effect of the (simulated) top, notoriously the most important ingredient of the sound of the acoustic guitar. And I am happy to say that, with the Top control at 3 o'clock and the other two at 50%, even with all the limitations imposed by still going through an electric guitar amplifier the sound from my Yamaha Pacifica gets reasonably close to that of my Seagull mini jumbo.

Following the traditions of Mooer pedals, the Acoustikar is easy to use, light to carry, and solid to withstand the hardships of the stage. Unfortunately, among these traditions, there is also a rather infamous one: a noisy switch! Each time I engage the pedal, a loud PTUNK! comes out of the loudspeaker: which is not really nice, especially for the audience. You might thus want to put a pedal with a "mute" function (e.g., a tuner) after the Acoustikar in your pedal chain.

This is great if you primarily play an electric but need an acoustic flavour for a few songs. I say flavour as it's very, very, passable in a mix but I wouldn't expect this to compete with the real thing.

It's got 3 modes: Piezo, Standard and Jumbo. The Piezo mode simulates the piezo pickup from an acoustic-electric guitar. Standard mode simulates a normal acoustic guitar. Jumbo mode gives you more low end and resonance by simulating a large bodied acoustic. It has a full metal casing making.The only downside I can think of is the micro toggle switch needs caution when a size 10 boot is in the vicinity.

Be careful with the top and body controls! Too much body creates a 'boomy' bass end and obviously too much top makes things very harsh.

I can't say how it compares to the Boss pedals since I've never played them but I believe they are terrible. Happily the Mooer pedal gives me enough tone and sound difference from my electric to create the illusion of an acoustic in the mix.

A great pedal that produces a quite passable /quite good acoustic tone for a player who does not want to carry another guitar or doesn't have one to bring to the gig.

This thing is a little too small for its own good. The knobs should've been bigger to provide better handling, these things are very delicate. Half a millimeter too much on one of these knobs could make all the difference depending on the system and guitar you have it connected to.

Also, as always, keep the pedal's volume really low and the system high, cause this thing will buzz and hum and do a lot of strange noises if you turn up the volume too high.

The good news is that it sounds really good and it fits in you pocket. It has a ''jumbo'' setting that actually gives the guitar a lot more body and base. I've only tried this on acoustic guitars, I do not know how it sounds on an electric with humbuckers or single coils or anything like that.