Found a great acoustic guitar pre-amp!

I recently bought an ART Tube MP preamp ($60) to use with an electric violin. It didn't work out too well because it amplified bowing noises and general scratchiness of the fiddle. So I threw the preamp in a drawer and figured that that was sixty bucks shot. So this evening I got it out and plugged an electric acoustic guitar into it, and was totally floored by how well the guitar sounded. I usually use a Fishman, but the ART blows it away.
Then I plugged a Breedlove mandolin in to it, and that mandolin never sounded better. I highly recommend it. It's cheap, and it sounds great

Thanks for the heads-up! That sounds like a great deal.

At one venue I play pretty regularly they always run my guitar through an ART tube preamp and it sounds great.

Had you tried any other preamps before this? I've used an ART SGX2000 Express as a preamp, but it is pretty big to haul around for that. It is a rack mount processor. Do you think the ART Tube MP would serve the same purpose as well? Of course it wouldn't have the reverb and other effects, but I can get effects elsewhere.

I've had so-so guitar preamps from Barcus Berry, MXR, and probably others.
For several years I've been using a Fishman preamp, which I considered
to be the best of all. The ART preamp has a 12ax7 tube in it, and the overall effect is a nice warm acoustic sound, warmer and more natural sounding than the Fishman, which is still pretty good, but not as good as I thought.