Balanced OUTput of a Guitar/Bass, Balanced INput of an amp...??

P

Proveras

I like my recordings.
Why there is not Balanced Guitars or Basses to connect to a Balanced Amp?????

that way I could be more comfortable with long cables or electricity in my home studio.

also all the inputs and outputs of all the devices must be balanced as standar now a days, like FX processors.

any reason why?'
any comment?
 
Just the way it is, my friend.... manufacturers don't want to cough up the extra few bucks it would take to run balanced out of instruments!!
 
Also, much of the precious "tone" that everybody is after comes from the interaction of those high-Z pickups and the high-Z input stages on the amps- certainly, that;s the case for a lot of guitar rigs. Go balanced, and you start sticking transformers into the signal path in places where they will have an effect (usually detrimental!) on the sound you get.

It's been a long time since I screwed around with one, but I have a vague recollection that the Les Paul Recording had a low-Z balanced output. I also recall it being a fairly lifeless sound, but it's been a lot of years and I slept since then. There are some current instruments with active electronics in them, and some sound quite nice- but none of them will ever *really* sound like a Telecaster into a Twin Reverb.

Nope: the sound everybody wants is a direct result of being high-Z and single-ended, seems like. I think that you are going to be stuck with having to minimize your cable runs for a long time to come...
 
There is also another reason.

Since virtually all guitar gear is 1/4 based, having a balanced out would have problems connecting to most guitar gear. One could use an adaptor, but that somewhat defeats the purpose in the first place.

As Blue Bear already pointed out, cost is also a factor.

Ed
 
skippy said:
the sound everybody wants is a direct result of being high-Z and single-ended, seems like. I think that you are going to be stuck with having to minimize your cable runs for a long time to come...
Click to expand...
Interesting - that never occurred to me.... the impact on tonal characteristics, I mean....
 
Yup. Just for grins sometimes, tape a good-quality DI box to a guitarist's strap, and connect the guitar to it with a _really_ short (say, 1 foot!) cable. Run the resulting balanced signal off to anything with a balanced input- say a nice preamp. Plug the output of that into anything else, even the guitarist's personal favorite amp. This way, the only sound you'll get will come through a balanced version of the signal path... Then, watch the guitarist tear his hair out trying to get his sound back. It's good for hours of amusment, especially if you bill by the hour for your time. (;-)

That's the reason I don't usually track a guitar through a DI, even if I intend to try to reamp it later. I'll *never* get the guitarist's sound. I'll get a sound I like, and the guitarist usually wants to shoot me for it! It's the same reason that it is so hard to get even a good wireless rig to sound right, as well. The loading of the pickup by that high-Z amp input can often be a major part of the sound. The higher the impedance of the pickup, the more profound the effect...
 
so does this mean I'm stuck keeping the guitarist and his amp in the same room? I'd really like to be able to run a 50 foot cable into another room so the guitarist can sit in the control room and listen to his sound through the monitors, but I hear the sound degrades after about 20 feet of guitar cable. There must be some practical solution to this.
 
Just ignore the post above. I did some digging and found a simple solution: Put the amp in the control room and run a long speaker cable to the cab, Duh! I don't know why I didn't think of this before. I guess you just get locked into setting amp heads on top of the speaker cabinet. Never thought about splitting them up. I just feel sorry for the guy with a combo amp now.
 
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