Can i use my amps head for a preamp?

T

tronus

New member
I have a peavey classic 30 tube amp, and was wondering if it is possible to use the head as a preamp. I would run my guitar into the head then from the heads output to my sound card. I think that output is powered, so im thinking it would break my card horribly.
 
Correct. The horrible breaking part, that is. Also, you have a good chance of roasting the Peavey's transformer.
 
If the amp has a LINE LEVEL output it'll work without damaging anything. It may not sound like you want it to but that's another issue. DO NOT use a speaker out from the the amp to drive any line input. That WILL blow stuff up.
 
If your running the tubes they need to drive something & not just your soundcard into the ground.
take an aux or loop line out but do something abou6t the power your amp is creating either a power sink if you want the thing to be quietish or have the speakers pumping as they should.
 
I don't know about the soundcard part, but you can get a really nice, and cheap, amp attenuator from a company called Weber which can serve as a load dump. People sometimes use them to run their signal directly into a pa without blowing up the transformer of your amp. You'd want to get a speaker simulator to run the signal through, otherwise it will definitely sound like crap.
I have no idea how the sound card would respond to that, however. I've wondered the same thing myself.
 
Basically running the speaker output of an amp into anything other than a speaker or a power soak is a bad idea.
Also ..... running anything other than a line level to the input of a soundcard is a bad idea.
Just mic the amp.
Or if you try it anyway at least post pics.
 
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Lt. Bob said:
Basically running the speaker output of an amp into anything other than a speaker or a power soak is a bad idea.
Also ..... running anything other than a line level to the input of a soundcard is a bad idea.
Just mic the amp.
Or if you try it anyway at least post pics.
Click to expand...

After a little investigating on this, I've found out that the Weber attenuators have a line out, and they serve as a load dump. So you could set it to load dump (otherwise known as dummy load) and run your amp's speaker out into that so you don't blow up your amp's transformer, then run the line out from the attenuator into you sound card's line in. You'd definitely want to put a speaker emulator in there somewhere like a H&K Red Box or a Behringer, otherwise it would sound pretty crappy. I'm pretty sure they would go in between the line out of the attenuator and the line in of your soundcard, but I'm not positive. The amp may go into the speaker simulator first, then line out from that to the soundcard and then run from the simulator's output to the load dump to protect your transformer. Anybody know which way it should be done? I know it can be done, I'm just not sure exactly how.
 
rockabilly1955 said:
what if you use a small practice amp and it has a headphone out?? can you run that direct to a souncard or mixer without damage?
Click to expand...
I think you could do that ...... seems like most line ins ought to be able to handle at least a volt and I doubt you get that much out of a headphone out. Don't know how it'd sound though ...... it may or may not match up well.
 
I've been doing it for months now. Runnin the headphone out to my mixer and no problems have come up. I justgot a new firewire interface and i would try it also only if i knew that no damage would be done :confused:
 
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