Recording Guitar

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 8:08 am

Well, I have had guitar lessons for 5 years, but stopped playing a long time ago. My electric guitar is still sitting beside my desk gathering dust, even though I recently cleaned it completely and fitted it with new strings even. I just can't be bothered to try playing it again. Then I thought, what if I could record it into my computer? Even though my playing would suck I could probably still get some nice samples from it now and then to add to my synth oriented music. But how do I do it? What do I need to record my guitar into Pulsar? I'm already planning on getting the much praised Celmo guitar amp modeller, but I'd still need a pre-amp of some sort right? To get the signal into my computer? Or can I just plug it in directly and use some sort of virtual preamp? Or does the Celmo thing do that for me? Lots of questions!

I see a lot of hardware preamps already have amp modelling, compression etc built in, (like the Pod) but I odn't really need all that if I can do it in the computer, so I guess I'm looking for an easier solution.

Can anyone help me out here?

[ This Message was edited by: King of Snake on 2003-02-12 08:12 ]

[ This Message was edited by: King of Snake on 2003-02-12 08:14 ]

visilia · Post by **visilia** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 8:12 am

If you have a mixer, you can use the mic-pre, but I'm not sure if this is a good solution. It's probably better to use some kind of DI box, but I'm afraid that somebody else will have to help you about that, because I know sh*t about DI boxes

cheers,
vincent

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 8:13 am

No I don't have a mixer, I just want to go straight into SFP!

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 8:48 am

You will have to aquire some type of DI/preamp box. The analog output from that can be plugged directly into the analog input of your soundcard.

There might be a cheap stomp box out there that will serve the same purpose. You just need to get the level from the pickups up to a usable level for the analog input.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 9:10 am

Hmmm, maybe something like this would do the job? http://www.joemeek.com/mq1micromeek.html

visilia · Post by **visilia** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 10:15 am

Sure, that would work, but if you want to use your Pulsar inputs (for real-time use of the Celmo GAM for example) and pay €200 less than this will be enough:

http://www.netzmarkt.de/thomann/artikel-147313.html

But like I said before, I don't know anything about differences in quality, or even the difference between active or passive DI boxes.

cheers,
vincent

spoimala · Post by **spoimala** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 10:22 am

Or things like Focusrite tonefactory or dbx 386 would be great.

krizrox · Post by **krizrox** » Wed Feb 12, 2003 11:08 am

There are way too many ways to solve this problem. There are dozens of DI boxes on the market, most of which cost less than $100USD. Check Musicians Friend website for examples. Behringer (isn't that a Euro company?) makes a few low cost DI solutions. So does BBE.

ART has a really nice little TubeMP unit that works great for this sort of thing. I've even seen a few with SPDIF outputs. I can't imagine you should have a problem finding a suitable solution.

At very least, see if you can find a cheap practice amp with a line out.

That JoeMeek unit looks nice but is probably overkill for what you need to do. Check with a local electronics supply store (they may have something inexpensive that will do the trick).

[ This Message was edited by: krizrox on 2003-02-12 11:14 ]

helpstone · Post by **helpstone** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 6:23 am

i work with the behringer v-amp. not bad it is a boss imitaion.

borg · Post by **borg** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 7:24 am

i just plug my guitar straight into the A8 convertor, then into celmo's blues man.

no preamp or whatever pro people use for this purpose. sometimes i plug the guitar into an old, crappy zoom fx box, and then in the A8.
for my needs, this is more than enough. i have to admit never having tried a preamp or di box, so i might have to reconsider.

but hey, the bluesman is free, you have a guitar and a pulsar, so just give it a try. jeezs, who promotes his new 'amper' here on Z, claims the demo's are made with the guitar plugged straight into his board...

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Fri Feb 14, 2003 1:57 pm

Well, I got myself a Behringer Ultra-DI box (http://www.feedback.nl/pages/popup.php?bar=DI100) today...thing is, I haven't used my guitar for so long now I can't find the damned guitar cable anymore!!

I have no idea where I put it, must have stuffed it in a box somwhere when I moved last year...
Well, I'll get a new one tomorrow and let you know how it works out.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sat Feb 15, 2003 12:22 pm

well I got a new cable, and a battery for the DI box (no phantom power coming from the CW boards, sadly), and the Celmo guitar amp demo, and started playing.

The Celmo sounded great, my guitar did not! The electronics and contacts are in bad shape, and there was lots of noise and crackles whenever I even looked at one of the tone pots or the cable socket! So I'm going to get it serviced first (if it's still serviceable without having to replace all the components!).

The sound coming from the Celmo were wonderful though!

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Sun Feb 16, 2003 3:58 pm

Definetely, the MQ1 will do very well for you, remember you will be able to sample million of things, not only your guitar, and this is a WHOLE NEW INSTRUMENT, or better to say: A NEVER ENDING INSTRUMENT!

Just go on...

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sun Feb 16, 2003 4:50 pm

Well at the moment just the DI box seems to work fine, so I'll skip the Joemeek for now and save some cash. Would it make the guitar sound much better if I added it? I always hear Joemeek just makes things sound nice

Also I don't have microphone at the moment, so I'm limited to recording guitar for now.

I really have to get back into my playing though! Haven't played for so long, now after only a few minutes my fingers hurt and my timing is all over the place

voidar · Post by **voidar** » Tue Feb 18, 2003 7:06 am

I take it you have an electric guitar.

It really depends on what sort of guitar you want to record. Clean sounds are generally easy to record, distorted ones are worse.

Generally, the pickups of your guitar ouput a signal of about equal strength to a dynamic microphone. What you need to do is amplify this signal to a line level one.

The oldest and most complex way of doing this is by micing a guitar amp. The signal chain would be:

guitar -> (preamp -> poweramp) -> speaker cabinet -> microphone -> preamp -> line..

All of these stages are instrumental in shaping the overall sound, but a bit "too" complex. It is really a field of its own and takes dedication. You really can not expect the same results all of the time either.

As a musician which use a lot of guitar in his music I rely on this method:

guitar -> preamp -> poweramp -> DI/speaker cab simulation -> line (+ microphone simulation/effects).

This method does NOT let room acoustics colour your sound in the recording process and you really can not underestimate the importance of a really dry signal.
When recording guitars it is usual to cut everything above 6KHz or let us say, distortion will sound very noisy and brittle.
The DI/cab sim unit I use is the Palmer PGA04 ADIG-LB. It has a really nice EQ section.

Since you do not own a mixer you should aquire a DI unit or perhaps this ART TubeMP thing. Tubes does wonders to your sound.

[ This Message was edited by: ragnvald on 2003-02-18 07:08 ]

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Tue Feb 18, 2003 9:10 am

Yeah I already got the DI unit and it does the job. Now my guitar is getting serviced, so next week I can start my practicing again.