I have to admit: I'm completely clueless about "acoustic guitar amps." Early in my questionable music career, "acoustic pickup" was about two steps away from an oxymoron. If ya wanted to play a git-box onstage at a medium-size or bigger venue, the sound guy put a mike in front of you; if you wanted volume, you played an electric guitar.

Back in the 1990s, I saw one I actually liked the idea of: instead of a speaker, it had a transducer stuck to the back of a piece of plywood, so you could get the volume & still retain the "woody" tone. No idea what the brand was, & I haven't seen one since.

In recent years, it seems like every maker is flinging out model after model of amp meant for acoustic guitars, some of them rather big, loud, & effects-laden. Like, the Trace Elliot TA-300, rated 300 watts, with DSP effects, EQ, & feedback locator.

See, if I need something that big or fancy for a solo gig, I'd be running to a small PA, rather than getting blasted in the back of the head by a combo amp.

Genz Benz, Traynor, LR Baggs, Vox, Kustom, SWR, Marshall... everyone's in on it.

Is there really that much demand? Are most of the buyers just blasting their ears out in the basement?

And does the system even make sense? I'm hearing a lot of acoustic guitars that come out of these things so tarted-up that it might just as well be an electric guitar run through a substantially smaller (& cheaper!!) standard amp.

The piezo pickups I'm familiar with seem like they're either optimized for direct-to-board recording (certainly a boon for home recorders; that's one reason I bought my Washburn) or a vocal-grade PA run. Some of them don't sound great when instead put through a standard guitar amp. My Markley "woody" ProMag just sounds AWFUL to an amp but works fine through the Zoom PS-04; I bought it primarily for practice, so I could get my sound "out front" & hear what I was doing to refine my playing.

Are these amps being sold to beginners, or maybe to players who're using super-wimpy strings? Last year we were discussing how the demand for guitars seems to be slacking off, so it seems odd to me that the dwindling pool of beginners would be starting out with big unwieldy axes with thicker strings.

Any insights or guesses? I'm confused.