Plugging a Guitar into a Comp?

[jclark]

Hey ya'll, I was just wondering how you go about doing this to record straight to a comp? Does all it take is a guitar with built-in electronics, 1/4 inch cable, and a 1/4 inch-to-mono plug?
Thanks

[Rob]

I assume this is for recording...

You'll need the instrument cable, and a 1/4"->1/8" adaptor to go into the input on your sound card. I would highly recommend getting a length of 1/8" cable (they sell it at Radio Shack as a headphone extension cord- it has to be male on one side and female on the other). The extension takes the weight of the instrument cable and adaptor off the input jack of the sound card. This weight could otherwise prove to be very damaging to your sound card.

You'll need a good recording program as well. I use Sound Forge- it has some nice features for automatically calibrating the input. Some people will suggest CoolEdit, but from personal experience I've found CoolEdit to be a poor recording program (a great editor, though).

[jclark]

cool, thanks, is there anything you need to do in the Volume control or Audio controls of your system to account for the guitar?

[Rob]

Trial and error. You never want to have a volume control set to max, so try to set it up with some combination of mids.

[jclark]

ok, so i plugged my 1/4 in into a "RadioShack Mono-to-Stereo Headphone Plug Adapter-Accepts 1/4" stereo phone plug : Fits 1/8" Mono mini phone jack", and have attempted to record, yet it still doesn't work, i screwed with the settings in Control panel and i still can't get it to work

[jclark]

well, if anybody can help, my AIM sn is Lensky22

[jclark]

hmm...the line in port doesnt work either....what is the battery on the eq thing for on the side of the guitar?

[bstorey]

? Not sure what you're talking about. Do you have an acoustic electric guitar? Then the battery is the pickup's power supply. But here's my advice: you want your acoustic electric to sound *good* in your computer, buy a preamp--little midiman audiobuddy and you'll be set. Make sure you're plugged into the red hole in the back of your PC as well... If you can be more specific about the problem I'd be happy to help. You ought to be able to hear your guitar through your computer's speakers while you're recording. If you can't then it might be a problem with the guitar (i.e the pickup battery is dead/missing)... Hope that helps...

[jkanter]

Originally posted by jclark
well, if anybody can help, my AIM sn is Lensky22 Here's what I would assume is wrong. Go to the little picture of a speaker on the system tray on the taskbar(bottom right of your screen). Double click it.....Go to Options -> Properties. Then select recording and click OK.

From there you should be able to select which input you would like the computer to use.

Hope that helps...... dmbtabs.com ....hehehe, hav ae good one, peace