Do I need a preamp for recording on my setup?

Hot Rats

New member
Hi everyone.

I'm currently using an oldish laptop that's still running XP, Cubase Essential 5, Guitar Rig 3 (and a few other bits and pieces).

My audio interface is a TASCAM US-122l, via USB. This serves me ok but I am concerned that the guitar parts sound a bit lifeless when recorded, especially electric guitar parts.

Put simply, will a preamp unit before the TASCAM US122 make a noticeable difference to how the electric guitar parts sound? Or maybe some other piece of kit?

I'm a purely bedroom musician, and as you can see I'm not very knowledgeable, so any thoughts are welcome.

Thanks
 
Hi there,

It might be good to list some detail about your setup and specs.
There's no doubt at all that a stellar preamp can make a great difference over a starter piece, but I'm of the opinion that there are a few things that need to come first to really get the benefit.

The instrument, the recording method, and the room would be the big three.
Are you running instrument cable straight in or using a microphone.
If the latter, what microphone+amp?

Depending on what you're doing, the rest of the mix could be an important factor too. Could you attach a clip of something you're working on to give us an idea of what you don't like?
 
i'd say probably not and that adding a plain preamp to a guitar isnt a big life sound changer.

my choice would be get a pedal amp simulator with Line Out and go into the interface Line In...the POD or HDPOD etc...Fender Mustang foot pedals $120 and you get a guitar cheap mans Axe FX $1500 system. these will get your gain and tones and better signal chain.
for bass guitar a good DI can work wonders into your Line In...actually you can get the bass through the guitar unit too.

the most common is playing through a guitar amp and putting a sm57 on it to your interface but I assume you want to go direct in and not have the amp loudness in the room.

actually a lot of guitar amps do double duty as a amplifier and Line/Direct recording unit many with USB and Line Out for recording.

I see Line 6 Spider amps that have the double-duty , used for $75 you get a nice practice amphead and recording unit for guitars and bass guitar. The Fender Mustang 3 and 5(head) would be a great bedroom/recording setup for under $200...the Fender 5 can be a live gig head later on adding a cabinet, but its a "double duty" unit with a nice pedal that comes with it too.
 
Do you have gain control with the Tascam interface? I'm guessing it's not pulling the signal from the guitar strong enough. You might be able to make up for this in the guitar software if there's gain control in there.

If the Tascam has a mic/line input toggle or different inputs for each, try using the mic input. With any luck it will have some phantom power and this might help you overcome the poor input signal you're getting with the guitar.

If you have a guitar amp kicking around, you could always use the line/headphone output from that to boost your guitar signal going in as well. A simple guitar pedal might work as a budget preamp, maybe an EQ pedal from the used shelf at the local music store.

Make sure the instrument cable you're using is actually working correctly. A while back I had a cable dying and didn't realize it right away. It was creating a kind of muffled effect on the guitar's tone, once swapped the problem went right away. Only thing I could assume is it was shorting out but not completely. Most of the time it's all or nothing.

Besides these things, the above advice is good regarding getting something to boost your guitar's input.
 
It just has to meet your "standards". When DAW started to do audio tracks, there could be some things that could be cool - I got some old clip that sounds a bit like a fuzz pedal. hahah
 
If the Tascam has a mic/line input toggle or different inputs for each, try using the mic input. With any luck it will have some phantom power and this might help you overcome the poor input signal you're getting with the guitar.

Hold up....
We're assuming he's plugging the instrument in directly, right?

Phantom power is needed or not needed. Nothing in between.
It won't maybe improve something. It's either required or not.

An instrument should be plugged in via 1/4" cable and the input device set to expect an instrument.

If you're suggesting he used a 1/4" to XLR so that his guitar is going into his mic preamp (for extra gain) fair enough, I guess, but DO NOT turn on phantom power.
A DI box would be the better, safer, approach.

If you're already using a mic, OP, the same is true. Phantom power is either required, or not. It's not a potential performance boost.

All said, it's 99% speculation. A clip and better description of your setup would be very helpful. :)
 
Oh FFS!

This isn't rocket science. Since the OP mentions GR3, I think we can assume this is a direct in, amp sim situation. Given that:

As long as your guitar sees a good high impedance (instrument input on the interface with any relevant switch set appropriately), and it's not clipping the interface, there's nothing a hardware unit can do for you that you can't do (I'd argue better) in software.

You're already getting exactly what the guitar is putting out, exactly what any amp or pedal would get out of it. If that needs to change somehow, then either change the guitar (either the controls on this one or a different one altogether), or add plugins to get what you want.
 
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Guys, don't focus on the hardware, this is the clue here.

I'm a purely bedroom musician,

Recording in a bedroom, trying to mix in a bedroom... the bedroom is not an ideal place. What the OP failed to mention is his recording environment or his mixing environment. Monitors, acoustic treatment, plugs, choices he's making. He does mention his skill and admits he is at the bottom side of the learning curve. As Steeno was leading towards, there are a lot of other factors that come into play before the OP should be looking at his interface or a preamp.

Lifelessness happens because you aren't hearing the mix correctly. Can you describe your room and monitors?

BTW, I quoted that snippet only for the location. Nothing to do with your musicianship or anything.
 
When using amp Sims, as long as you are not clipping the signal at the interface and you are getting enough signal to make the sim work (distort) properly, then the only thing you can really do is learn how to program the sim to better suit your needs.

If the sim has a compressor/sustainer pedal built in, use that for your distorted sounds. It will allow you to set the distortion crunchy instead of fuzzy.

That's one of the things that happens with Sims: if you set the distortion for crunch, every time you don't hit the stringstreets quite hard enough, it goes clean and/or has no sustain.

The compressor/ sustainer fixes that
 
I can't say I've ever found a sim useful as a substitute, but don't forget the importance of clean. If you can get clean sounding good, you can probably maintain that into the distortion realm.
 
The best sounding sim tones that I've heard have involved using a good cabinet impulse in a convolution reverb plugin. Amplitube, guitar rig, etc are ok but their cabinet/mic/room sims are a little lackluster. Try bypassing their cab/mic and use a cab impulse instead. There are tons of free ones floating around the net. It'd be worth trying, at least.
 
Can I make two FFS posts in one thread? ;)

A guitar amp is a series of filters and nonlinearities. An amp sim is also a series of filters and nonlinearities. Every amp sounds and feels a little different, and the actual practical (measurable, demonstrable) difference between an amp and it's (reasonably good) sim is not much more than the difference between two of the same model amp. Most amp sims are more like listening on the control room monitors to the mic on the amp in the live room...

The funny part about all amp sims is that they real do "feel" best when they are cranked through actual speakers in the room as loud as the amp would otherwise be. Any time you use an amp sim just because you don't want to be loud and bother your roommates/neighbors, you're going to miss out on at least some sustain and resonance. You'll also miss out on the body buzz, which is important for some people.
 
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