TC-Helicon Play Acoustic

Vocal Bliss and Rich Acoustic Tone

The natural companion for any modern singer-songwriter, Play Acoustic combines all the things you need to make a live acoustic performance shine; lavish vocal sounds, perfect backing harmonies, best-selling guitar FX, and unique processing that makes your six-string sing – in perfect harmony with your voice.

What Every Singer Wants

Keep your vocals clean with a tight reverb or simple harmony – or go all out with tasty delays, thick doubles, edgy hardtuning, cool modulations, and raw distortions – the choice is yours. Best of all, we’ve improved the portamento and humanization of our renowned harmony effects, making your tireless two-singer backing group more realistic than ever. And don’t worry about setting the key. Play Acoustic follows your guitar chords automatically for harmonies that stay in tune and in time.

What Every Singer Needs

Equipped with our trademark Adaptive Tone, Play Acoustic acts as your personal sound engineer providing the one feature no singer should be without: automatic intelligent control of Compression, EQ, De-essing, and Gating, giving your voice the impact and presence to always stand out in the mix.

Acoustic Alchemy

Your acoustic guitar is both a powerful and delicate instrument, and we’ve made sure that Play Acoustic treats it with the respect it deserves. Tailor-made guitar FX from our sister company TC Electronic add a sweet touch of magic with essential styles from their bestselling TonePrint pedals – Hall of Fame Reverb and Corona Chorus – while the direct Guitar DI output ensures signal fidelity all the way from pedal to PA.

Body Resonance

The sound of resonating wood is what gives an acoustic guitar its particular sonic allure, and this is where BodyRez™ comes in. New and unique to Play Acoustic, the BodyRez algorithm restores acoustic tone to guitars fitted with undersaddle pickups. Carefully placed filters and fast acting compression combine to reduce “piezo-quack”, making your amplified guitar sound like the beautiful full-bodied instrument it is. Dial in as much or as little BodyRez as you need and use the handy EQ controls to fine-tune the dynamics of your sound.

Intuitive Controls and Dedicated I/O

Operating and navigating Play Acoustic is as straightforward as it gets. Use the Up/Down footswitches or central knob to easily browse factory presets, or use the GENRE button to find styles that you like. Dedicated VOCAL FX and GUITAR FX buttons let you access effects directly, and the intuitive user interface makes editing simple and fast. Create your own library of presets with the FAVORITE feature for easy “setlist” recall.

Separate mono XLR outputs for vocals and guitar makes it painless for any sound engineer to mix the levels perfectly for your audience, or you can set the output to Stereo and create your own custom panoramic stereo mix.

Make It a HIT

HIT is a performance-inspired feature for building intensity into any vocal performance. Press the HIT button to turn on multiple effects at once and create quick A/B scenes for each preset. Use it to add dazzling vocal effects for the chorus, or strip it down for the verse – it’s your call.

Loop Around

The VLOOP™ performance looper allows you to create complete guitar and vocal loops for solo jamming or impressive layered live performances. VLOOP is also handy for soundcheck; record a short phrase and walk out into the audience to check levels while your “virtual you” plays!

Features

• Complete vocal path including Tone, Harmony, HardTune, Reverb, Double, Delay, μMod (chorus/flange, etc.), and Transducer (megaphone/distortion FX)
• Global Adaptive EQ, Compression, De-ess, Gate & Pitch Correction
• Note-perfect Vocal Harmonies using Auto Chord Detection from guitar input
• 2 Voices of NaturalPlay Harmony, plus 2 voices of humanized Doubling
• TC Electronic guitar FX with styles from Hall of Fame Reverb and Corona Chorus
• Dedicated Guitar and Vocal FX access/edit buttons
• BodyRez™ EQ, compression styles optimized for undersaddle piezo pickup acoustic guitars
• Narrow notch filter to tame acoustic guitar feedback
• Low and high shelving plus fully parametric guitar EQ controls
• Separate vocal and pro-quality guitar DI outputs or stereo mix
• Low-noise Mic-preamp
• VLOOP™ performance looper for vocal and/or guitar with undo and redo
• Loop time: Stereo: 15 seconds with Undo (30 seconds without). Mono: 30 seconds with Undo (60 seconds without)
• Simple effects customization with styles and icons
• RoomSense microphones for monitoring and practicing
• Key/Scale harmony mode for setting specific song keys via the footswitches
• Plug in and practice with your mobile device via AUX or stream tracks and record over USB including a Vocal Cancel function
• Navigate factory presets by Genre and mark Favorites
• USB for audio streaming and connection to VoiceSupport, our free app for firmware updates, preset management, and tips & tricks
• Compatible with the MP-75 Modern Performance Vocal Microphone and Sennheiser e 835 fx microphone with Mic Control
• Optional Switch-3 for additional performance control
• Headphone output

Speacifications

Analog Inputs

• Connectors: Mic.: balanced XLR, Guitar: unbalanced 1/4″ TS, Aux: 1/8″ stereo mini jack
• Impedance: Balanced/Unbalanced: Mic.: 2.14/1.07 kOhm
• Mic Input Level @ 0 dBFS: -42dBu to +13dBu
• EIN @ Max Mic Gain Rg = 150 Ohm : -127 dBu
• Mic SNR: > 104 dB
• Phantom Power: +48V (on/off via Setup menu)
• Guitar Input impedance: 1 MOhm
• Guitar Input Level @ 0 dBFS: 12 dBu
• Guitar Input SNR: > 115dB
• Aux Input Level @ 0dBu: +2dBu
• A to D Conversion: 24 bit, 128 x oversampling bitstream, 110dB SNR A-weighted

Analog Outputs

• D to A Conversion: 24 bit, 128 x oversampling bitstream, 115dB SNR A-weighted
• Connectors, balanced: XLR
• Output Impedance Balanced/ Unbalanced: 80/40 Ohm
• XLR Output 0dBFS: +2 dBu
• Dynamic Range: > 109 dB, 20 Hz to 20 kHz
• Frequency Response: +0.30/-0 dB, 20 Hz to 20 kHz
• Headphone Out: 1/8″ Mini stereo jack

Control

• USB: USB-B (Preset Management, Firmware Updates and audio I/O)
• Pedal: 1/4″ TRS phone jack
• Mic Control using TC-Helicon MP-75 Microphone or Sennheiser e 835 fx mic

Power

• External Power Supply. Mains Voltage Input: 100 to 240 VAC, 50 to 60 Hz (auto-select)
• 12V DC 0.4A max output
• Power Consumption: < 14 W