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It's been a while since I owned my last guitar. It was an acoustic with nylon strings. I also played on acoustic guitars with steel strings.

However, I haven't have a guitar for years and wanted to get a new one. My local music shop has a great offer on a Gibson Les Paul Less Plus 2015.

My question is now as I never had an electric guitar before and I want to use it to record some phrases in the studio, too. Can I create sounds like in those tracks or do I need an acoustic guitar for that like a Dreadnought?

Guitar loop runs through the whole track:

Guitar is most present in the break at 3:20:

Through my studio I have access to Native Instruments Guitar Rig and Waves GTR to add/create effects.

PS: I hope this question is suitable for this stack exchange site

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  • 1
    The guitar sounds in both tracks are those of an acoustic, not electric, guitar. But could you create them from an electric guitar? There are various acoustic simulator pedals/plugins out there, with varying levels of realism. You could also create them without any guitar at all, or using a guitar with a MIDI pickup as a controller. But if that's the sound and style you're after, I don't think a Les Paul is the right starting point.
    – jonrsharpe
    Commented Aug 5, 2015 at 9:53
  • @jonrsharpe Thanks for your comment. It seems that I have to get two guitars then. Argh. Thought the electric one would be so versatile that I can get it to be acoustic sounding as well. But the Les Paul can sound clean and nice, too? So it's not just rock music I can play with an electric one, right? I was so excited getting an electric one - now I'm unsure whether it's the right choice.
    – Carl
    Commented Aug 5, 2015 at 10:27
  • Parker Guitars and other's make electric guitars that also have an acoustic under saddle piezo to generate a more natural, realistic acoustic guitar sound. The Parker PDF 85 is affordable and gives you both magnetic electric guitar pickups as well as an acoustic pick up.
    – Rockin Cowboy
    Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 13:24
  • May be best if you consider an electric and an acoustic as two different instruments. Yes with guitar rig an electric would be more versatile but both these tracks are acoustic. But as jonrsharpe mentioned, you can use a midi controller and get some decent midi instruments these days. Unless your very good at guitar it will sound much more polished than you could ever do on your own.
    – Dave Engineer
    Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:25
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    @aparente001 Haha, no, no. Don't take this sentence too serious. It was kind of ironic. You know, I have multiple synths and they all sound different and now I'm going to have multiple guitars which sound different too, as well. And I thought one would be suitable for everything. Silly me. :)
    – Carl
    Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 8:29

2 Answers 2

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These are acoustic guitars in the tracks but you could probably get a similar sound (since you will be adding effects and processing) using an acoustic simulator with a electric guitar like the Boss AC-3.

Having an acoustic simulator with a electric guitar with single coil pickups can create a nice sound. It's not exactly the same as an acoustic guitar but can still sound interesting and if processed correctly it may fit for the kind of sounds you want to create. The sound is ultimately personal preference, so try it out.

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To give you a straight answer, yes, you could. It's never going to have that clear raw sound that comes from the hollow body of an acoustic but you can get close.

I would lower your bass to near 0. Increase treble and use medium reverb with a short decay.

Focus your playing on the near-bridge pickups to get a tighter sound.

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  • I don't appreciate a down vote when you don't give a reason as to why. Have you tried the method I described? You can easily achieve an acoustic sound with an electric, and in the end it comes down to personal preference.
    – Cornbeetle
    Commented Oct 5, 2016 at 21:35

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