The equipment needed to record guitars direct is:
Turning input gain knob on the interface to the minimum before plugging any connector into the signal path or before removing units is a good habit to avoid nasty peaks that would damage your hearing or equipment. Sometimes, even turning down the monitors’ volume too would be a good habit)
- guitar
- quarter inch TS jack cables
- computer with any DAW software (e.g. Reaper)
- audio interface
- optional equipment
- some additional ¼” TS jack cables
- good quality Direct Box (DI)
- guitar amplifier (combo or stack)
Electric guitar is usually being connected using a ¼” TS jack cable. What is common for all the techniques below is that always before recording we’ll need to match the input gain level with a knob on the interface so the loudest part in a song won’t reach -0dBFS or even go anywhere near “the red”. It applies both to LED indicators or displays on interface’s enclosure and meters on the computer’s screen.
Version 1: Connect an electric guitar or a bass with DiBox for more responsive, zero-latency monitoring by a combo guitar amplifier.
To do this, you need a DiBox, additional two ¼” TS jack cables, and of course - the amp. Start out launching the DAW and connect the guitar to the input of a DiBox. The first output of the DiBox should be connected to input of the interface and the second goes to the amplifier’s guitar input. Set the levels as explained above, then turn on the amp, set it’s volume and record guitar parts using no software monitoring “in the box” that would cause latency.
Version 2: Use your amplifier’s preamp tone in the recording - apart from the amp, one additional quarter inch TS jack cable is necessary. This simple technique is about connecting guitar amplifier’s line output to the interface. Always check twice if you chose the right socket and never connect any line-level unit to the speaker output which has very high level that will most likely damage any processor or interface connected to it. This signal is at the line level, so it demands line input in the interface - it’s not designed to be ran through any guitar input. Bear in mind that guitar speaker has a huge impact on how your amp sounds and the only thing you can get from the line output is speaker emulation circuit that in my opinion doesn’t help much to get professional-sounding guitar parts. Although, you would try recording guitar parts that way and then, processing them using Impulse Response technique that I will explain below.
Version 3: Connecting an electric guitar or bass straight into interface to record parts using VST plugins and IRs for monitoring.
The first step is launching the DAW, connecting your guitar to the guitar input in your interface and setting suitable level. Then we’ll need to build FX chain to simulate guitar amplifier and speaker cabinet. To do this, I will use:
- · Le456 – a freeware VST plugin that’s a good simulation of a guitar amplifier. (http://lepouplugins.blogspot.com)
- · LeCab 2 – a freeware VST plugin that’s capable of reproducing a timbre of any speaker cabinet using specially prepared, short Wave files (called Impulse Responses) (http://lepouplugins.blogspot.com)
- · RedWirez impulse response samples are available as a free demo pack that consists of some really nice Celestion-packed Marshall 1960 tones. (More IRs in the paid version) (http://www.redwirez.com/free1960g12m25s.jsp?ref=home)
The rules of building an FX chain for virtual guitar amp are the same as for the real one. Choose a track in your DAW and add first VST plugin: Le456 and next: LeCab. Now we need to configure LeCab to work as a cabinet simulation. The LeCab 2 consists of 6 sections that remind of channel strips. You can use only one to make it work but two or more are necessary to get a decent guitar tone.
What are those controls for? The button with a folder icon is for opening an impulse response file (that you downloaded from RedWirez website). You will sort out quickly what all those names are for but the key is microphone placement. It works on the same basis as picking up electric guitar through a guitar amp with a microphone in front of it. The LEFT/RIGHT input switch on the left is for choosing from which stereo channel will the raw guitar be taken from (in case you would like to record two guitar parts and build a stereo group of them). All the other controls are for how the impulse responses are used in the finally processed sound.
The best way to get a good tone this way is to fine-tune your Le456 and LeCab settings tweaking controls during playing guitar (or listening to playback of a track recorded before). So go to your DAW track and arm it for recording so the track input works (I marked it with orange square) and enable monitoring so you can hear what you play in monitors (yellow square).
What we record is just a raw guitar track – as it comes to the input of the interface, the DAW is applying the simulations of guitar ramp tone. It means that you can improve tone of your guitar anytime during mixing, such ways as changing amp to another VST plugin, switching between impulses or even reamping (which is rather a long story to tell).
We took some closer look on the most popular direct recording techniques. Each one has some pros and cons and It’s really worth it to know all of them to pick up the suitable method for any studio situation. While recording through a DiBox and monitoring in a combo amp seems to be the most reliable and very elastic solution, the third of techniques described in this lesson, using software monitoring and Impulse Responses may be applied at really low latencies that wouldn’t make a difference and it doesn’t need that many pieces of equipment while giving similar results. Optimizing the OS of your computer can really make a difference. But remember that it depends both on the equipment and it’s configuration so it’s worth to spend some time on it, to get good results. In my opinion, recording parts through guitar amp’s line out may be really great for bass guitar, but electric guitar takes more effort due to the necessity to add some processing that would reproduce filtering that normally comes from speaker. In my opinion, using amplifiers line-out is rather a bad idea, unless you have a really great preamp that’s worth it – then Impulse Responses would come into play, maybe bringing some stunning results…
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