Phase shift without the phase shifter

Hi folks:

Last night I was playing a gig, and noticed that the electric guitar sounded like the phase shifter was active...except that the phase shift pedal was sitting on the table behind the band, not plugged in. But there was very definitely a phase-shift sound going on. WTF?

The next morning, while in the shower, I figured it out. We had a bigger crowd than usual, so instead of sprawling across the front of the room, we pulled everything in close. That included the acoustic guitar on its stand, which was sitting about 6' from the electric's amp...and the acoustic was picking up the sound with a ~6 millisecond delay, the strings were resonating, and it was coming back out through the acoustic's amp, which was sitting next to the electric's amp. Presto: phase shift. I'd never noticed it before, because usually the acoustic is hanging a good deal farther away.

So now I know that if I want to avoid the phase-shift effect, I need to mute the acoustic amp when I'm playing the electric. Or not...because it sounded kind of cool.

Peace,
Paul

Years ago I went to a huge mens meeting in Phoenix, something like 17,000 men and Tommy Walker was the leading music I was on the side and was watching the monitor mix engineer pulling his hair out because he was getting some strange feedback and could not figure out where it was coming from...

Tommy had sat his guitar down on the stage as he led the men in some songs, and it was plugged into an amp, so naturally it started feeding back, but it was not exactly in the system, because the amp was mic'ed...it was a weird situation and I'm sure the guy thought his system was melting down...I think what was happening was the vibrations on the stage were getting into the acoustic guitar somehow and since the sound engineer could not get to the amp he thought it was something else...

Acoustics do some strange things...

I once saw Phil Keaggy using a Jamman and an acoustic, he actually sang into his acoustic the harmony parts to the song he was singing and playing...it was trippy...