Connect A Guitar And Pedal Effects To PC For Record

Last Updated on April 9, 2014 by Nick

Connect A Guitar And Pedal Effects To PC For Record

Somebody ever asked me ‘How To Connect A Guitar And Pedal Effects to PC???’. For answer this question, you must find quite a few multi fx boxes with USB interface built right in. And then check out the soundcard in your computer, and make sure that it can support the recording software you’ll be using. Then, find an interface with 1/4″ inputs, XLR microphone inputs, and a power supply. You can buy a cheap adapter from electronic shop to convert the 1/4″ plug on your guitar output to fit the 1/8″ mic input on your computer. For example I use Boss ME-70, and you’ll need 1/4-inch stereo phone plug to 1/8-inch stereo mini plug adapter, 1/4-inch mono phone plug to 1/8-inch mono mini plug adapter (optional).

First step, Connect the 1/4-inch end of the stereo adapter cable to the “REC OUT/PHONES” jack on the rear panel of the ME-70. Connect the 1/8-inch end of the stereo adapter cable to the blue jack on your computer’s sound card. And then Connect the ME-70 to both an amplifier and your computer by using the mono adapter in the same manner by using the “Gt. Amp” outputs. Route one channel to your amp and the other to the computer. Next, select your sound card input as the source for the ME-70’s audio output. The rest of the leveling is done via the program you record with, the in/out of the interface, and the volume of the guitar or processor pedal. If you are using the split output method, you can connect a microphone to the pink input on your sound card to provide a mix of direct and amplified sounds.

If you want to record multi-track stuff, I’d suggest downloading a multitracking program, recording a background beat (ie drum machine, etc), then recording new tracks along with it, while monitoring over headphones. The only real recording software I’ve used and it’s quite good is Pro Tools LE. The nice thing about this is you can get the software bundled with an audio interface that will accept a range of inputs like USB, XLR (microphone) and 1/4″. To do this in real-time, you will probably need ASIO drivers. The USB interface mfg should provide them, otherwise you will need to download the ASIO4ALL software.

Hopefully the article ‘Connect A Guitar And Pedal Effects To PC For Record’ was useful.