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Getting good guitar tone for FREE!


Sixto
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So i have audiophile 2496 right now. There seems to be a lot of noise coming out. When I play a note on the guitar, the noise goes away. What gives?? When there is no actual signal in the wire, is there induced signals that can be heard in mega-high gain setups?

I testing playing a really high note and the noise went away (Visual EQ confirmed).

Is there a way to get around this noise problem? I don't think it is a "noisy amp" as it is no longer noisy when I play a note. Is the thing that fixes this called a DI box? thx

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Oh man, finding a well wired location is key. I did all the wiring in my house, so I designed it specifically to give me an ultra clean flow out of every outlet without bullshit. If you haven't had that luxury, you need to take your guitar around the room,while plugged in, and see which outlet gives you the least noise. You'll want to use this one as a primary power source. Then, start testing your power supplies with your guitar. PC and laptop power units can sometimes create noise when part of the voltage path, for this, you should isolate them and plug them into a second outlet (through a surge protector, of course). Eventually, when you get serious enough, you can get yourself a good power conditioning unit, and that'll clean up all the power going to your entire system.

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With the virtual amp on super high gain, there is no "noise" until I specify an input.

Then there is noise even without the sound card plugged into anything. Maybe it is from magnetic induced currents? Ok well now I plug my guitar straight into the rca cable. Same noise still until I play a note. Now I get a nice pure note, but as the note dies away, the noise comes back. I don't really know much about it. Is this the sort of thing a DI box fixes? I have been using a multiband expander with some success as a noise gate, but I would like a better solution as there is not very good sustain (can't hold a pinch harmonic for more than a second). I am going to try my friends pod ux1 thing and see if that works any better.

Thanks for the good suggestions everyone. I'll upload an audio file soon so you can hear it if you are curious

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Just wanted to post that I was able to get some awesome sounds out of my electric using some of the VSTs mentioned in the original post, especially the Marshall JCM900. Might post a clip here once I've got something.

For some reason, I always had the impression that you had to mic a cabinet to get a decent electric sound (not sure where I learned this). This was as easy as plugging straight into the soundcard and recording. I feel like a totally new avenue of making songs is open to me now. You rule, Sixto.

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I finally found an answer to my question.

It was in the revalver mk III user manual found here

http://www.peavey.com/products/revalver/index.cfm

here are 3 ways to connect guitar to computer

1. simplest option hook guitar to line-in using suitable connector, usually 1/4 to 1/8 inch adapter. The sound is not good. Due to an impedance mismatch. Most guitars do no have batteries powering their outputs. The guitar falls outside of electrical standards because its output is passive. The only signal is that generated by the string vibrating above the magnets.

2. use a DI box or preamp. DI stands for direct input. It matches the impedance of the sound card and the output impedance of the guitar. These could cost as low as $20 or above $200. A DI box has a high impedance input for your guitar to plug into. Then plug in straight to the computer line in jack.

3. The middle road is to use an ordinary stomp box which is like a DI box.

a) stomp box is electrically powered (battery/outlet)

B) you use it in bypassed mode

c) it is not a true bypass. If the sound disappears when you remove the battery, then you want to use it as a DI box.

Anything else with "Hi-Z" high impedance inputs would likely work as well

4. best option is to buy a good audio interface. Look for something with ASIO drivers. There are several made just for guitar for under $100. (tone port gx for example)

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Thankyou so much sixto! I've been waiting for many many months for the link to the cab impulses you supplied to work :). I have a problem with those amp sims etc though, I use Cakewalk Music Creator 4...pretty much a scaled down version of Sonar and well for some reason the left speaker is from the plugins and the right speaker just plays back the direct signal from my guitar. I can sort of fix the problem by making the track mono, but then it's a mix of the clean guitar and the amp sim, so it sounds like 2 guitars are being played, not a pleasant sound (same problem with wagner). Could it be my soundcard/music software?

However I found the Impulse Cabs quite astounding, I was simply amazed, sounded better than my smallish amp being miced up. May I suggest an amp sim called Dirthead, it didn't have the stereo splitting problem like the others, it has a built in cab sim(cannot change cab model however) and it can be disabled. Excellent distortion/crunch/clean in my point of view, the built in cab is alright but it sounds different when it's from a cab impulse, not sure which is better. I'll just put in a few examples to compare :).

First is dirthead0.80 with cab on: http://www.box.net/shared/kflxeqaktc

Dirthead with cab off using KeFIR running the Mesa Boogie Studio 22 441 Edge 48s impulse: http://www.box.net/shared/99i8lk065j

Guitar guru's, any suggestions/feedback?

(Oops I forgot to mention I the gain on the left side is a bit lower, I kind of forgot to change it when I changed the right one...well it doesn't affect the sound too much :) )

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OK, I have a Line6 HD150, I can run a line out to my computer from the amp head, it has lots of amp models etc.

Any tips on how to get it sounding good in audacity? Should I cut out the effects and just add them in after the recording? Using one of the programs seems kind of redundant but would they give me a better sound versus the amp's settings?

Also, I generally roll the eq with bass down, Mid somewhere up and high around the mids, though I do tweak the EQ for different tones. When I direct input the guitar it sounds really weak, plus lots of buzz and hum.When I run the line out from the amp it comes through really loud, but I can cut out all the noise and such. Plus on the direct, the 7 string sounds really bass heavy. Is it more a matter of preference or is there better ways?

I apologize if this is out of place. I'm new to recording and am finding this site most helpful.

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  • 1 month later...

Hey Lunahorum, I think I may be having the same problem you had with respect to level of amp noise. I'm directly connecting my guitar into my firebox, and getting some amp hiss thorugh amplitube and the vsts posted on this thread. I thought it was normal at first, like a part of the amp simulation, but you posted that you got rid of it.

I couldn't gather how you did it from your post. You mentioned getting an audiophile 2496. From what I could tell it seemed to fix your problem somewhat. So I guess it might be my firebox, but I'm not sure. If you could elaborate more on what exactly you did, that'd be a big help to me.

Edit: Crap, sorry about the off-topicness. Only just realized I could have sent the user a pm instead -_-

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Lots of new stuff has come out since I made this thread so I'll probably be updating sometime soon. I'll probably also be making a new thread that talks more about setting up all the "virtual knobs" on these goodies so people just starting to learn this stuff (and all you Shreddage users!) can get a better idea of how to craft their own tones.

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