Admittedly, all the reviews I read was for the use of an acoustic steel guitar, all glowing, but I didn’t find a review using nylon classical guitar. Nevertheless, it got me really excited and finally pulled the trigger to buy it.

I use a Fishman under-saddle transducer on a world-class guitar. When I plugged it into the Direct Input, it sounds fantastic! But only when the gain is low. On high volumes, you lose the natural and charming sound of the classical guitar. This would be true of any other amp.

Needing more power for a more natural sound, I decided to buy the DPA 4099 clip-on condenser mic. This made it sound a lot more natural on higher volumes, and feedback issue is minimal which is huge by itself!

But I have mixed feeling regarding the sound, at least when it comes to classical guitar. It is rather flat and not very warm. You may be able to use a mixer to achieve a warm sound, but that defeats the simplicity of set-up purpose. Also, there is a background hiss that may be unacceptable to some classical guitarists playing a lot of quiet passages. I contacted Fishman regarding the hiss and they acknowledged that it is a known issue. But they offered a solution which is to pry open the panel and tape the ribbon wire to the side to avoid contact with the center structure. I tried this but I still can’t tell if it made a difference.

I find myself still preferring the sound of my good old AER Compact 60 using either DI or DPA 4099. It is very warm and natural. It just doesn’t have the power for a bigger venue.

After experimenting more with the Fishman Solo, I was able to achieve the sound I wanted. The solution for me is to use both the DI on low-gain setting but coupled with the DPA 4099 condenser mic for a natural sound. This gave me a warm and fat sound that I dig. In fact, DPA has a double cable accessory that allows you to have less cable clutter. However, this cable is priced at $199 so I decided in the meantime to just use two separate cables.

The sound is great and I would still recommend it simply because there is no other similar equipment in this price range. The Bose L1 is too expensive and I think less compact. The hiss still bothers me and I remain slightly bummed by it but I think it is the best thing available out there for my purpose so I decided to keep it.

Now, if only AER can come up with a similar amp, I am so there!

As for the sound, I give it only 4 out of 5 stars because it has a quiet but noticeable buzz or hum even before you plug any mics into it. (I’ve actually listened to two of these amps and they both had the buzz. ) It’s not a terribly loud buzz, but you probably wouldn’t want to use it in a quiet recording studio.

Another problem that others have noted is that the reverb is too strong to be useful on anything but the lowest settings. In fact, eventually I’ll probably ditch the built-in reverb altogether and use one of TC Helicon’s outboard vocal processors. (Thankfully the Fishman does have an FX send loop. )

Okay, now that all the negatives are out of the way, let me tell you that I’ve tried LOTS of portable P. A. “solutions” and NONE of them even begin to match up to the Fishman. It really does sound good, clear and loud. And compared to a quality guitar amp, its not that expensive. Bite the bullet, pay the money and you won’t regret it.