By: Jamie Holroyd
When home recording is mentioned in conversations between musicians, microphones, mixers, Macs, tons of cables and complicated software often come to mind.
All of these items are expensive and time consuming to set up for the guitarist who just wants to plug in and play without any hassle, so I was excited to be able to try a product that would make this long process simpler.
In today’s day and age, more guitarists are recording from home; whether you are the guitarist who wants to jam to backing tracks or a session musician working remotely.
While I am by no means an expert in recording, I do write guitar lessons and eBooks that need clear audio examples for students to play along with in my lessons.
Before receiving my Guitar2USB lead, I used my HD webcam microphone, and while the recordings weren’t that bad, they had a lot of background noise and easily distorted.
First of all, I must credit the delivery time of my cable. I requested it on Tuesday and it was here in the UK on Thursday on the same week, which is the fastest I have ever received an item from the US.
Within one minute of opening the box, I had everything set up, which was quickly done as I already had Audacity installed on my computer.
From there, I hit record and played a few chords and single notes, then pressed the play button to listen back, and I was immediately impressed.
There was no distortion or hiss at all, just a very clear, clean guitar sound that was surprisingly responsive.
The sound from plugging a guitar straight into the computer was OK, but just like an amp, it can be very dry without any reverb.
Unfortunately the effects from Audacity I tried to use didn’t really cut it for me, so I used a reverb pedal I had lying around, and there’s nothing to stop the more tech-minded guitarist using software such Cubase and Reason.
The first clip below demonstrates a clean jazz sound for single lines and chords. I recorded this track using the neck pickup on my Tele with the volume turned down a little and the tone turned down quite a lot.
While it doesn’t quite have the depth and fullness of my Polytone amp, the sound is very clear, warm and balanced with no background noise at all. A huge improvement on my phone recordings and actually better than some studios I’ve recorded in over the years.
https://soundcloud.com/jamieh/guitar2usb-jazz-test
The next clip features some overdrive from a pedal on the P-90 neck pickup off my archtop. As you can hear I start by playing lightly and increasing my attack and the sound is responsive and very clear.
https://soundcloud.com/jamieh/overdriven-neck
Chorus and delay pedals are featured on the next clip. I used a Strat to play some open chords, and again the sound is clear and crisp.
https://soundcloud.com/jamieh/guitar2usb-chorus-and-delay
The final solo guitar clip features an overdriven blues-rock type of lick played on the middle pickup then the back pickup of my Tele. I had the tone back off and volume on full for this to achieve a warmer sound.
https://soundcloud.com/jamieh/guitar2usb-middle-and-back
To complete this test I recorded a short sample of me improvising over a blues backing track. I imported the backing track into audacity, pressed record, and imported the file as an mp3.
https://soundcloud.com/jamieh/slow-blues-in-g
If you are the kind of player who knows how to get tone from using your guitars controls and by using attack and dynamics and want something that you can be recording with straight away, the Guitar2USB is for you.
The cable is usually priced at $30, and you can find out more at this link. Click the following link for more info on Guitar2USB: http://www.guitar2usb.com/
What do you think of the Guitar2USB lead? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Jamie Holroyd is a UK based educator, author and performer as well as the founder of www.jamieholroydguitar.com, a free website with lessons to help students across the globe play jazz and blues guitar.
