Hotone a Station acoustic Preamp

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The ‘offboard’ acoustic preamp is often misunderstood. Why on earth do we need another preamp when we have one on our guitar and another in the input stage of our acoustic amp or PA? Well, are you happy with your amplified sound? Do you need more control (anti-feedback, EQ and/or an effects loop)? Do you need a level boost, or maybe you need an additional mic input for your vocal or perhaps with an under-saddle to pick up the nuances of your guitar?

It’s hardly a large genre, but units such as LR Baggs’ all-singing Venue DI (with tuner, adjustable boost, five-band EQ, notch filter, phase switch, effects loop, XLR DI and standard outputs) and Fishman’s Platinum Pro EQ (which pretty much matches the Venue DI and includes a very musical compressor) are cool but pricey. Enter the Hotone A Station: a very good price with a pretty good spec.

The simple compact box measures 140 (d) by 120 (w) by 54mm (h) and sports seven rotary controls: volume, bass, middle and treble with smaller-knobbed notch, notch frequency and mic gain placed above. At the base are two footswitches (with LED status indicators) for a preset +6dB level boost and a mute. The top side houses the hook-up connectors: XLR mic in (with optional phantom power), standard jack guitar in, jack for the effects loop (which can be configured for either the mic, guitar inputs or both), unbalanced jack out and balanced XLR out. Power comes from a standard nine-volt supply (not included) or via a flip-top battery compartment for a nine-volt battery. There’s also a power-on button among the rear panel features – don’t forget that!

in use

Let’s start with what you can’t do. There’s no onboard tuner and there’s no EQ for the mic input. This latter point might be a deal-breaker as, although you could hook up EQ via the effects loop, it would have to be mic-specific, which means you couldn’t use the loop for any other guitar effects. Or, if summed to both inputs, it means the mic EQ would be shared. Plus, the outputs of both mic and guitar are summed so you can’t even EQ the mic separately, or add a different reverb via your mixing desk. We found the only way to work this was to set up the mic, add some EQ from the desk and a little reverb and then add the guitar to that – possible, certainly.

It’s quiet in use with well-centred EQ – though with no ‘flat’ notched positions – while the volume knob controls the output level of your guitar. And although there’s no input gain indicator, we had no trouble with a pretty hot piezo output from our reference Martin electro.

While some notch filters have a frequency sweep with a narrow preset notched reduction, here we have both notch and notch frequency, which seemingly works like an additional lower midrange cut/ boost and in use augments the higher centred midrange control to clean up the often troublesome mid and lower-mid areas. It works to reduce some feedback, typically in this lower-mid area, but an additional phase switch would have helped.

Verdict

As a floor ‘stage-box’, there’s little wrong here, especially if you have a passive onboard system. It falls short of the market leaders in specification, but it’s under half the price. A good gigbag addition. [DB]