The Acousti-Phonic is renowned for having exceptionally good sound quality. Musicians are often surprised to learn that the mag signal passed through a unity-gain preamp, as they swear it sounds like its going "straight out". If you need to bypass the Acousti-Phonic for your setup, you will lose the blending feature of the Acousti-Phonic. This can be implemented as a permanent modification, or with an "emergency" bypass switch, so you can play your mags until you have a chance to replace you battery.