For Acoustic?
The acoustic guitar has a VERY wide dynamic range, so in live situations, I always compress it when I'm doing sound. How much you compress depends on the situation.
Tonight I'm doing a very loud rock band with an acoustic/keyboard player. I will have a very hard limit ("it gets THIS loud and no louder!") on the acoustic and a medium threshold at which the boost kicks in (so the lower-volume passages are still audible over the wall of noise). This allows him to find his place in the mix, and allows me to protect my investment in speakers.
When it's just a solo artist or a duo, there's less need for "cut" because the guitar is the only instrument, and you usually want to feature the voice anyway. In those situations, I'll often use the compressor more as a limiter with the boost component threshold set low (i.e., it has to be very quiet for it to kick in) and the limiter function set medium-high and gentle to tame the harsh transients but keep the guitar sounding natural.
If you're using a pedal, without really knowing which one you're using or which setting you're using it in, my best generic advice would be to turn it on and leave it on, with low to moderate settings on all knobs. Think of it as part of your amplification chain rather than your effects chain, because unless you're using it as an effect, it really is part of the amplification component of your signal.
I don't know if that helps, but if you can give us a bit more information, I'm sure we can be more helpful.
Joe
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