Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Talk about your MIDI interfaces, microphones, keyboards...

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glowrak guy
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by glowrak guy »

sysrqer wrote:
glowrak guy wrote:Used Fender Mustang 1 v.1 usb modeling amp/interface run $60 used,
new Mustang 1 v.2 is $120 new,
Is this what you are talking about http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Mustang1V2 ?
I'm sure it sounds fantastic but it wouldn't be an option for me, I would have to shp it to my country and pay import taxes, both at least partly based on weight so it would turn out quite pricy for me.
Don't know your wherabouts, but in europe,

http://eu.musicianuniversity.com/Record ... rface.html

ebay also has a gig for europe, I think.

Fender has many international dealers/distributors. Sometimes Mustangs are chosen
by 'beginners' due to price alone, and are sold cheap second-hand, so pay close watch
to ads in the nearby cities/countries. Lots of useful guitar i/o gear in the meanwhile

...and we have a marketplace here now, so place a want-to-buy advertisement,
and see if anyone responds!
Cheers
CrocoDuck
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by CrocoDuck »

Hi there, I didn't read all the discussion, so this will perhaps go over many points already touched.

To correctly couple an electric instrument to a piece of electronics, that piece of electronics needs to have high input impedance. The reason is that the instrument transducers (pickups) generate voltage signals. Pickups are basically coils, so they have a resonant impedance (and frequency response). The fact is that this impedance is usually large (few kohms). Voltage signals are transmitted across loads without losses only when the input impedance of the next load is much higher of the output impedance of the previous. So, pickups with high impedance => need equipment with even higher impedance to capture the pickup output correctly. Losses will manifest as a reduction in volume, but dependent on frequency! So you totally skew the timbre of the instrument if impedance is not optimal (and you also lower the S/N ratio and load the circuit in a way that might introduce distortion). Most electronics equipment that work with electric basses and guitars (amplifiers, stompboxes, whatever) usually have 1 Mohm input impedance. That is the minimal impedance I allow as input for my stompboxes.

There are several ways to accomplish that.

Use a soundcard with Hi-Z (High impedance) input (the gutarlink will do, but perhaps not too flexible if you need something else at some point).

Use a DI box in front of a mixer that then plugs into the line-in of your soundcard (or a DI box directly if you find matching connectivity).

Use a guitar amplifier and, if it has it, use its line output to connect it to the soundcard input.

Build your own cheap opamp - transistor based buffer.

As a rule of thumb, always check the specified input impedance of the equipment you are considering buying.

I did all of the above and I think the best solution is the Hi-Z interface. I have been also recording my amplifier directly with microphones, tried various things with their placement... But the acoustics of my room is way too horrible for that (cubic room = degenerate modal hell). I prefer to use Guitarix + Calf instead.
CrocoDuck
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by CrocoDuck »

beck wrote:You forgot one good and simple option CrocoDuck. The one i gave and have myself.

Buy an analog mixer board which can handle guitar amp (even when distorted) and has a master out volume. Most good older mixer boards have at least one channel for guitar amp.
Plug the mixer board in the soundcard.
Plug the guitar in the amp, and the amp in the mixer board (or w/ mic).
Done. As simple as that.

And plug in whatever more you want on the other channels (keyboards, mic's etc) just because you can. Or two guitars+amps together like i do sometimes when jamming. :wink:
Yeah I didn't mean to make an exhaustive list, I just dropped in few things I did in the past. What you describe is pretty much how I actually started, but without mixer (my first guitar amp had a line output I could plug directly to the computer).

I still use a similar setup in my home studio really, but instead of using an amp I enter the mixer with the DI box, which I prefer (I developed a taste for capturing pristine sound I can later modify).

Perhaps, the only downside of your approach is that you can plug many things in the mixer indeed, but they all get mixed to two channels. An interface has the pro that you can independently record different tracks. There are soundcards that are made similarly to mixers that might be worth to investigate. Few old models are reviewed in this page. I think there are many new devices of that kind that can work on Linux, they are usually called "USB Mixers". Worth a google I guess.

Another con, thinking about it, is that you cannot move that easily. If portability is goal (that might not be) an interface is gonna be better suited.
beck wrote: The fun is that everybody say's it's almost unreachable to record an amp distorted guitar ..... like i do ll the time. :mrgreen:
I even know many who serious invested in gear and software who quit trying. Once was on a guitar forum and all said that my setup "can not work, or at least not propper". And "no latency problems" at all was reason to almost kill me. Man, got me big arguments when i kept saying "the impossible" that it worked perfectly :lol: And one i know well his eyes popped out :shock: when he actually saw my cheap setup working perfect. 8)
Even better .... i can plug in EVERY electric instrument to jam or record it. Do that all the time.
That's why it is a mystery to me why almost everyone rejects this fine option quickly and grabs back at digital solutions that often appear to work not easily or even not at all. But after this reaction i'll stop promoting it. :oops:
You mean in this thread? I didn't read the whole of it (I just wanted to add my few cents in case they might be useful) but I don't see any reason why a setup like you describe should not work at all. It might be inconvenient if you need multi-track recording, but not everybody needs that... I would double check the mixer is indeed designed to handle amplifier input. If the input comes from the speaker output a normal line-in could easily fry (depending on the power of the amp and the load impedance of the line-in) as the speaker output is adapted for maximal transfer of power. Not sure you mean to connect them this way... Possible but better be careful.

Still, you can make DI box + Mixer + Simple soundcard for around 100$ as well. That's how my home studio is setup. All behringer stuff, which does not suck as badly as most people say (especially the DI boxes).
glowrak guy
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by glowrak guy »

beck wrote: That's why it is a mystery to me why almost everyone rejects this fine option quickly and grabs back at digital solutions that often appear to work not easily or even not at all. But after this reaction i'll stop promoting it. :oops:
The more useful ideas, the better. One never knows when someone in a search engine
will be a perfect fit for advice given in the past. The gear is far less important
than the music made with it!
Cheers
folderol
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by folderol »

glowrak guy wrote:The gear is far less important
than the music made with it!
Cheers
This ^
A point that sometimes get lost in the noise.
The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
CrocoDuck
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by CrocoDuck »

glowrak guy wrote:
beck wrote: The gear is far less important
Indeed. As long as your gear is good enough to not alter your artwork through unwanted artefacts (linear - nonlinear distortion, noise, etc...) you are good to go. There's plenty of cheap equipment that does the job amazingly.

I hope sysrqer got some useful insight about properly capturing an electric instrument with a computer. I have the impression that there are many almost-off-topic sub-discussions that might obfuscate the answer to his question, that pretty much boils down to "whatever it has high input impedance and is convenient for you".
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sysrqer
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by sysrqer »

CrocoDuck wrote: I hope sysrqer got some useful insight about properly capturing an electric instrument with a computer. I have the impression that there are many almost-off-topic sub-discussions that might obfuscate the answer to his question, that pretty much boils down to "whatever it has high input impedance and is convenient for you".
Indeed, I did get some excellent answers to my question and I really appreciate all the input people have given. While some to detract from what I was originally looking for, they have been interesting to read and consider.

beck wrote: This guy say's he's a starter. I got a bit carried away (excusses for that) because of tips like to buy a guitar and start soldering to go off deviate from the original design of the guitar. Ain't that to complicated way's to start with while it can be done much easier?
I'm not really a beginner as such, I've just spent a lot of time with crappy hardware and without the desire to improve things, then a long time without an instrument, and now I want to start from scratch and make better recordings. While I've never been great at soldering, to be honest it's not much more hassle than some of the other suggestions, either in terms of cost or effort. I do appreciate all the suggestions that everyone has given, in their own way they have all shed light of what I was really asking.

The reason I was primarily looking to just plug the guitar in to the computer directly is because I live in a country where everything has to be imported which means taxes on top of shipping costs or an inflated cost with these things + profit added on if I find a shop which sells them so something cheap for some of you guys can be quite expensive for others. I also don't speak the language very well so that makes things even more difficult. But that's the great thing about all the answers in the thread, they all cater to different perspectives and needs.
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sysrqer
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by sysrqer »

How about firewire vs usb? I would guess that firewire is a lot faster but does it generally work ok in linux?
CrocoDuck
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by CrocoDuck »

sysrqer wrote:How about firewire vs usb? I would guess that firewire is a lot faster but does it generally work ok in linux?
Pick the following with a grain of salt as I looked into it quite a lot of time ago. FireWire should actually be slower than USB, but it has the advantage of having symmetric read/write speed and, most importantly, it is usually on a bus of its own. USB hubs on your laptop might be in use by other devices (wifi, webcam...) and each one can require interrupts, which might build up to buffer overruns (xruns).

The usual rule of thumb is that Texas Instruments firewire chipsets work best under Linux. You can check the chipset of your port using lspci. I briefly covered this on my blog (FFADO section). Few references in there might be useful for you.

It has been a while since a new firewire device has been released. Perhaps, because it has been a while since consumer computers with firewire have been released. With the advent of USB3 I imagine firewire to pretty much disappear from the audio devices scenes.

I own a Behringher FCA202 and I really like it. Works out of the box.
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by CrocoDuck »

A thing that came up in my mind. If you plan to plug into your onboard soundcard through a DI box beware that the quality might still not be best depending on your onboard audio preamplifiers. My old laptop builtin audiocard had a very awful frequency response, cutting down a lot of stuff above 7 kHz. It was designed with speech in mind (and to be as cheap as possible).
glowrak guy
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by glowrak guy »

So true. If the weakest link in your audio chain is the audio i/o itself,
buying external gear that is significantly better, won't be a benefit
until you ugrade the i/o later. The $$$ is a hard taskmaster, so investing
time learning compatibilties, prices, and qualities helps a lot. You don't always have to follow
a certain order of purchases, as long as you understand that getting a bargain
on one item may have future, rather than an immediate benefit to sound quality.

If music is your business, some hardware that seems too expensive now,
might be worth the interest on a few monthly payments. Items that will be
used every day may also fall in that category, for a hobbyist,
if one is willing to sacrifice the Starbucks and fast-food venues to cover the
charges.

Fortunately, there are always new free or inexpensive products
that can add new dimensions to creative potential.
The are usually enough unread pdf files on our hard-drives,
that an unused feature or technology is just a learning curve
away from being reality. This might be a useful reference for this topic:

http://www.deltamedia.com/resource/impedance.html

Cheers
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by lykwydchykyn »

I'll just throw in my 2 cents...

I've tried a lot of ways of doing electric guitars, I just keep going back to my old P.O.D. 2.0 that I've had since my touring days (16 years ago... jeez). It's not a great sound, but it takes a guitar signal and puts out line-level, does cabinet emulation and some rudimentary effects. I run that into my interface/mixer/soundcard.

I'm sure there are better devices 16 years later, and probably reasonably cheap, so I'm not saying you *NEED* this particular device; my point is that trying to get a clean signal into the computer and doing amp modelling with e.g. Guitarix has been frustrating to me. For some reason it never sounds like a guitar going into an amp, it sounds like a recording of a guitar going into an amp, if that makes sense.

It just works better for me to get the sound I want on an external device and bring that into the system at line level.
glowrak guy
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by glowrak guy »

lykwydchykyn wrote: It just works better for me to get the sound I want on an external device and bring that into the system at line level.
I would think you could make some clean presets on the POD, with some varied EQ
to represent various string gauge and pickups, with the cab-sim off, if possible,
so you could hear guitarix, rakarrak etc. as their sounds are intended.
Old gear that works, is no less valuable than old musicians that work, So many
rockers in their 70's not yet relegated to rockers...
Have you ever placed a good stompbox between the guitar and POD?
That can be a fun way to bolster what hits the software at the other end.
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by lykwydchykyn »

glowrak guy wrote: I would think you could make some clean presets on the POD, with some varied EQ
to represent various string gauge and pickups, with the cab-sim off, if possible,
so you could hear guitarix, rakarrak etc. as their sounds are intended.
I've tried it different ways, preamping the guitar with the POD, preamping with my Mackie, direct in; just something about the levels is never quite right (or it's too noisy -- the old POD is really noisy if you overdrive the output). I dunno, just me. I like playing with Guiatrix, but not so much in a mix.
Have you ever placed a good stompbox between the guitar and POD?
Yeah I have an octafuzz which is nice to throw in there, a crybaby, and a couple other random overdrives. I'm not terribly imaginative with guitar tones these days. I used to be all about tweaking timbres but nowadays I'm more interested in arrangements, mic placement, layering instruments, and those kinds of really old-school ideas.
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Re: Buying a guitar - how to record it?

Post by vincent »

To plug my guitar, I bought a Yamaha THR10 amp: http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical- ... uct_lineup

It is recognized as an audio card by Linux and you can install the THR patch Editor soft using Wine (it is a MIDI device).

Code: Select all

$ cat /proc/asound/cards 
 0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel
                      HDA Intel at 0xf6dfc000 irq 30
 1 [THR10          ]: USB-Audio - THR10
                      Yamaha Corporation THR10 at usb-0000:00:1d.7-2, high speed
And moreover, it is a fantastic little amp !
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