There are two types of Guitar Amps on the UK market, the combo amplifier and the separate amplifier head and speaker cabinet. A combo amp, also known as a combination amplifier, is a set up where the amp and the speaker are in the same cabinet. This is a cleaner solution as it reduces cabling btween the amp and cabinet and so reduces the risk of amp failure.
While the separate amp head and speaker cabinet results in more cabling, it has the benefit of allowing the amp head to feed a number of speaker cabinets at the same time and so improve the spread and penetration of the sound and for this reason is preferred by all professional musicians.
Guitar players around the world tend to prefer both combo amplifiers and amp heads which utilise valve technology. While valves are an older technology, the consensus is that the valves produce warmer, softer sounds. By contrast, bass players tend to lean towards sold state components which produce lots of bass tone with distortion free sounds.
To have an acoustic guitar amp, there must first be some sort of interface involved, whether in the guise of a guitar pick up, a microphone or some sort of transducer. The primary job of the interface is to convert the sound from the acoustic guitar into an electronic signal which can then be amplified via an amp system. A number of manufacturers now produce acoustic guitar amps and elector-acoustic guitar amplifiers which are specifically designed for just this task, in nearly all cases these come as combination amplifiers with the amp and speaker in the same cabinet.
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