Can I use an acoustic bass for the course?

Yes you can definitely do Beginner to Badass on an acoustic bass guitar or U-bass.

With a standard acoustic bass, the main difference is that you won't be able to rest your thumb on the pickup when I tell you to.

This is a bummer, but you can work around it by lightly resting your thumb on the body of the bass, or resting it on the edge of the fingerboard, depending on what seems to work best on your instrument.

On a U-bass, you’ve got that issue, and you may also have a different scale length. Due to this, there may be times you want to slightly change a fingering I assign, especially on the higher frets. All good, no biggie.