The Play Acoustic

Having some issues with gain staging of my TC Helicon Play Acoustic with my Loudbox Artist for live gig. Getting frustrated balancing it all...Upgraded from the Loudbox mini to the more powerful Artist recently, so probably a factor here.  Think I need a gain staging routine / sequence lesson...On the Play Acoustic there are multiple input / output set points, fx gain parameters, etc. My goal is, when I stomp in a harmony preset, my amp volume out level ( mainly a vocal issue) should be little to no different than before, but now with my harmony parts... a smooth transition /balance .  Hope there are users out there that use it with an amp, versus a mixer, PA, or both in line. 
 
Thanks.

Hey Cactus Music thanks for writing - I was beginning to think no one would respond on this. You have it pretty correct. I use this exactly as described - for a small/medium coffee house  or cafe type solo gig. Since my acoustic amp (the Loudbox Artist) is dual channel for mic and vocal - I split my two Play Acoustic outputs to these guitar and vocal channels of that amp - and not using a mixer in between. I seems too redundant and just extra controls to mess with on such a simple set up as 1 vocal and guitar. Yes, the 'Body Rez" guitar effect feature in that Play Acoustic box is nice and has several  options; and is designed to have your guitar sound more natural and less "plugged in". For vocal there are a huge number of presets - and parameters/genres to mess with - I have three or 4 presets that I use for a gig - and have them arranged to easily scroll through with the foot switch. There is even an on line "app" you can hook the unit up to for programming  and actually downloading new resents - many of which are designed to emulate certain well known artists or bands and their type of sound. The guitar presets ---verb, chorus, etc are "global" so once you set it up - it remains the same no matter which vocal style or preset you chose during a gig. With that program, using your computer screen, you can arrange  the order of all presents - and then transfer this data into your Play Acoustic...sweet!
I have not tried it out yet - but the Play Acoustic unit has some built in mics that listen to the room sound - so it can pick up the key of the song from your play or a band (important for accurate harmonies !) - if you don't want to route your guitar through the unit --- otherwise it reads the key directly off your guitar when plugged into it - capo- up does not matter - its accurate!
 
Occasional for a bigger room, I add an extra speaker (the Alto Professional - Trouper) that has 3 channels, each with 3 band EQ - its a compact column with 3 vertical speakers and a tweeter) - I run my Guitar amp output over to that. If I wanted to, I could run my  vocal line out of the Play Acoustic over to that - and bypass the guitar amp channel - I need to experiment with that.... 
 
Ok my original post was  about my having trouble with adjusting the levels - mainly on vocal to sound right when coming out of the guitar amp/vocal channel --- it can get a little tricky to adjust the settings for harmony - and I will just have to do more practice on that - last week at my gig, my harmony parts got too loud and sounded goofy - so I stopped kicking it in. I think its because this amp is double the watts as my previous one - so I have to compensate for that when I set up the output levels on the Play Acoustic.... sounds complicated but its not really. I hope someone else can write in on this ---- best of luck to you and hope you get that unit !! maybe you can write back after using it a while and tell me how you set it up. Thanks !

The Play Acoustic does have a designated Mic input level dial on the outside, and a small LED peak light, so you can have good control over that. I may have mis- represented some things. With the "soft buttons" and center knob button, you have fine- adjustment ability on the units bright screen, for every parameter ...for guitar, vocal, whole mix, and the set-up. It works great, just a little learning curve is all.
 
Besides this if you want a great acoustic preamp that will really make your acoustic sound good,, check out the Fishman Platnum pre amp. If for example you were to plug directly into a PA without an acoustic amp. I will try to keep you updated when I get my Play Acoustic levels sounding good...and share what I did. 

Thanks Charles. I might have read that a while back but was still informative. One question was he said the footswicth jack was for a volume pedal? I think that it's actually for a TC swicth 3 which I have already for my TC BH 250 bass amp. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Switch3
 
I think this unit is my best pick out of all the products they make. I find the bigger unites would be overkill as all I need is a little bit of harmony here and there. I don't need pitch correction for my voice.  The fact that it might add better tone to my guitar is a bonus.
 
I just bought a Radial Tonebone PZ pre and it was a little disapointing tone wise. Really didn't make any differance but I will still need it for swapping between guitars as well for the rare ocation I end up on a pro stage with a proper system. It's perfect for my 2 guitars as one is a passive LR Beggs PU and the other is active. 
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PZPre
 
But both are folk sized so a bit thin plugged in. I have been using a SM 57 on bigger gigs for solos and adding a little low end but that's a PITA and one more channel. The Tonebone has a boost pedal.