Hello, newby here...
I use a PreSonus Firestudio. I want to record a direct signal from an electric guitar, but also the live (tube)amp sound mic'd up. I don't have a DI or anything, so I've been trying stuff out. I like to record the raw clean sound, so i can always add a digital amp, or send it back to an amp, and re-record it with different settings.
I've got it to work like this:
Guitar>Firestudio>FX send>amp
The amp got a signal, even before I opened the gain on the Firestudio. But the whole gain button didn't affect the sound at all over the amp. So I guess it's nothing to worry about.
What I do worry about... Can the amp handle it? Is the signal from the send different from the raw guitar? And if so, will it hurt the amp? Or is there a different, better way to achieve this?
Thanks!
Comments
It's worth trying first taking the guitar output to both the amp
It's worth trying first taking the guitar output to both the amp and the FireStudio, as building or buying a re-amp box is a moderate commitment. The FireStudio instrument inputs on channels 1 and 2 are 1 MOhm impedance, so although you will get some tone change from the guitar pickup when feeding both the FireStudio and your amp, you can try it and see if it rules out the simple approach. Use a T-piece mono jack adaptor plugged into either the amp input or the FireStudio instrument input, and then a short jack-jack cable to the other piece of gear.
Use a mic input to a separate channel on the FireStudio as usual for miking the amp. What type of mic do you have for this? What's your room acoustic like?
The killer comes when you decide that you want to re-amp the recorded direct channel by feeding a FireStudio DAC output into your guitar amp and re-recording the output via a microphone. If this is what is in the back of your mind, you had better start building Link's nice-looking re-amp box sooner rather than later, as you can use it for the original recording via the FireStudio Send output rather than using a T-piece on the guitar signal.
FX-sends should be a low-impedance output (100-300 ohms) at li
FX-sends should be a low-impedance output (100-300 ohms) at line level (Vpeak = 1.737), your amp is expecting a high impedance(20k to 50k) signal from your guitar (the typical guitar pick up puts out between 0.150 V peak to ~ 1.4 peak).
Its best to use re-amp circuit to handle the impedances for you.