Quote: Original post by darookie

Yeah. A DI box would work. All a DI does is bring the sound to mic level and attenuate it. A pre-amp adds extra juice to the line on top of that plus allows for more "color" in the sound. Go with tube models on both things if you want your sound to be nice and warm. In honesty, its usually a good idea to have both a DI and a preamp. You will get the best sound with both even though one can exist without the other. My pick for a DI is the Groove Tubes DITTO box. Its relatively cheap and sounds great.


Intrument -> DI box -> Pre-amp -> Mixer

If you had a DI box and IK Multimedia's Amplitube plugin then it would work just fine.

I would go with Kylotan's idea of the mic setup. Check out www.sweetwater.com for mic prices.

Quote: Original post by lunarss
I recommend a Studio Projects C1 for a mic ($200). It produces great recordings (almost on par with a Neumann U87 which is considered one of the best and costs $1200+) from my experience.

For distorted electric guitar, the standard is the Shure SM-57 - cheap, reliable, and used on thousands of recordings (as well as live). The Studio Projects will require phantom power, which is another expense to add on top of it, requiring either a phantom power box, or a preamp/mixer that can supply it.

Yep. The Shure SM 57 (or 58) is the standard mic for recording from a guitar amp, the reason being that it will provide compression, making the intense dynamics manageable. If you use a Noymans U87 or similarly sensetive condensor mic in this situation you would get unwanted distortion on loud bits (also, you might even damage the mic). Second hand an SM 57 would be £50-85 or $50-85 (electronic equipment costs more in UK due to taxes). If you were some kind of virtuoso guitarist and wanted to preserve a large dynamic range the most sensetive mic I would feel comfortable putting in front of a guitar amp would be an AKG 440. These are great multi purpose mics... pretty good at pretty much everything. If you were to only own a single microphone and wanted to use it to record a variety of instruments this is the mic for you, but for standard rock guitar playing you want the SM 57. The SM 57 is also useful for miking up snare drums or recording shouty-type vocals common to heavy rock/metal/punk acts.

Forget D.I. boxes except for messing around learning mixing software etc. They don't sound anywhere near as good as a real amp. The reason you need a DI-box (or alternatively an audio interface and virtual amp) is that most electronic instruments output at "line" level which is about ten times as powerful as mic level. You could indeed burn your soundcard by plugging the line out of your amp into its mic in, so dont :).