Any recommendations on a USB Guitar input? I have an acoustic guitar that I think has a passive pickup as I cannot find a 9 volt battery within. With an amplifier, I used a barcus-berry preamp, but now want to output to my laptop and Audacity.
This forum has recommended Behringer USB connectors, but at Amazon the MAONO Amazon.com is rated a little higher.
Has anyone used the MAONO USB Audio Interface?
thanks
bob
If you want a natural sounding acoustic guitar sound, it would be better to use a microphone rather than DI.
I’ve never heard of MAONO, so I guess it is one of the many cheap Chinese brands that crop up regularly.
A better known brand for low cost USB audio interfaces in Behringer. I’ve use a Behringer umc202hd, which gives remarkably good audio quality for the price.
The cheaper Behringer products tend to be cased in plastic, but with a bit of care and home use, they can provide great service for many years (I have a Behringer UCA-202 that still works perfectly after more than 10 years, though the label fell off after about 5 years).
A guitar pickup is basically a powerful magnet next to a coil of wire. The two are invisible to each other unless you vibrate a piece of metal close by. Say, for example, a plucked, vibrating string. The string starts a vibrating magnetic field which gets picked up by the coil of wire and shoved out the connector or cable.
It should work with any microphone input with a 1/8" (3.5 mm) or 1/4" (6.3mm) connection. Please note this little dance depends on metal objects dancing close to each other. Mellow, easy-on-the-fingers Nylon strings need not apply.
Also note the instant you deploy an actual stand-alone microphone, you get yourself into the requirement of a quiet, echo-free room. You are recording the environment. That’s not a problem with the magnetic pickup.
Koz
That is usually the case for electric guitars. For acoustic guitars, a strip of piezo material below the bridge is more common, though there are quite a few other systems (including magnetic pickups).
High quality pickup systems (which usually incorporate a high quality pre-amp) can achieve a fairly realistic acoustic sound (generally considered good enough for live performance), but they always sound a bit artificial when listening critically to a recording.
Guitar pickups are higher impedance than microphones and good stage/studio mics are balanced (3-wires) with an XLR connection.
A mic input is “not correct” for a guitar and you won’t get the best tone.
If you don’t see a regular guitar pickup it’s probably a piezo pickup and it might be “hidden” inside.
Piezo pickups are even higher impedance than regular guitar pickups so a guitar/instrument input is even more important.
Ding!
That’s probably how the nylon string people get picked up.
I did do an experiment with one of the rock people at work. He had a good quality magnetic pickup and I had a good quality scope. If he really hogged down on his favorite chord, he could produce electrical signals similar to restrained line level. I wouldn’t have guessed that.
Koz
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