Guitar -> Amp -> Laptop?

[240v]

Hello everyone!

This is my first post (besides my introduction).

I'm a student so I can't really whip out $150 out of my pocket and spend it on an audio interface. I'm trying to find the best solution of recording vocals and guitar without having to buy an interface (until i save up!).

For now, I'm not too fussed about recording more than one track at a time. Just one is good enough as I'm not doing anything live.

What I've ended up doing right now is plugging my guitar or microphone into my guitar amplifier and connecting to headphone port of my amplifier into the mic jack of my laptop. Then I use a noise gate plugin to remove the background noise and record.

I know that I shouldn't expect great quality with this kind of setup, but can anyone give me some tips/suggestions on getting the best out of what I have right now? I just got Studio One for my birthday, so I'm pretty good on the software side of things.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post, I appreciate it

 

[mjbphotos]

The soundcard in most computers has about $0.69 worth of components. You are not going to be able to do much with it. Unless the headphone output of the amp has a separate volume control, you will have to keep the amp volume low to keep from overdriving the mic input (causing clipping).
Save up some money, you can get a decent interface, like the M Audio Fast Track II for under $100

 

[Murdersgalore]

I would go further to recommend a cheap usb microphone. Even the cheapest of the cheap would most likely do better for you than going direct into the laptops aux input.