"best" way to feed dry elec-guitar into pc...

[TraumFlug]

Hi there!

I'm just asking about your opinions on this. I like to play my guitar very much, and nothing beats having a real amp in front of you for feeling & harmonic feedbacks etc. and then mic it, but I'd sooner or later like to experiment with things like guitarix/gx_head as an alternative, expecially for recording the dry signal while listening to the wet, and then tweak the dry sig. & processing until it sounds even more sweet than it did while playing.

so I'd need to feed my guitar dry signal to my soundcard, it's an m-audio 2496, with rca inputs. what's the best way to obtain similliar dynamic sounds like from a real amp? preamp? di-box? direct connecting with the right cable (I guess that won't really do good...)?

looking forward to suggestions

[spm_gl]

While a DI box into a mic input works okay, I would strongly recommend using a preamp. A DI box doesn't have a high enough input impedance, and the direct guitar signal has some very ugly treble going on.

[thorgal]

there are mainly 3 reasons why you'd want a DI box, so see if you fit in here:

- impedance matching (the DI will convert the high imp input to low imp output)
- balanced output at mic level (most of the time)
- breaking of ground loop (the "humming" noise you can hear when connecting your instrument directly to your mixing desk)

If you need a DI, you may want to add a cab simulator to cut off the high treble of the guitar signal. Some DIs come with a cab sim.
You can also DI the output of you guitar amp so you capture the amp cab as well feeding the DI. You can record two tracks actually: one with the DI output (DI plugged to amp output) and another one containing the mic'ing of the amp (standard procedure: put a mic in front of your amp and preamp the mic signal). On the DAW, you can then mix down these tracks according to your liking.

(Personally, if I did not have my son playing or sleeping nearby, I would fiddle that way - I wish I had a room elsewhere in the house just for music prod ... dream dream dream).

[Jan]

Hi!

I have experimented with some gear over the years to get a good amp like sound without actually using an amp. I tried the DI out of my JMP-1, a Zoom GM-200 and software. Never was wholly satisfied.

The best recording sound I have so far is with my AMT Distortion Station. I play it with different guitars and it always sounds good when I mix it with a bit of reverb or an early reflection effect, just like the real thing. The CPU footprint is very low and it sounds really good, I think.

I'll try and upload a file with something I recorded earlier while fooling around with a guitar. That can give you an idea how my recording method sounds.

Edit:

Here is the file I promised:

http://soundcloud.com/radiomatic/amt-dt-2-with-ltd-tele

This is a rather large example of how the AMT DT-2 sounds with a LTD Tele. The first few minutes are with a clean sound, until the end you hear a crunch sound. All unprocessed, that's the pure signal from the DT-2 without any effects.

I know the playing is terrible. It's just random doodling - I couldn't resist.

[slowpick]

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/plu ... er-mustang

These Mustang amps are great for using with Rakarrack, Guitarx2, Calf Plugins,
and for mixing in the amps saveable presets for exotic creations, crafted using Plug

http://piorekf.org/plug/

the linux patch editor, which is now at version 1.0. Fender's windows/mac
patch editor, Fuse, is excellent, for those using multiple OS setups.