On 07/06/2014 08:57 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
On 07/06/2014 08:45 PM, Doug wrote:
On 07/06/2014 06:13 PM, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
I am looking for a simple amplifer program.
I have looked at audacity, but I would have to be 'recording' to get
'playthrough'. There is supposedly a .vst plugin, but I have not
found it yet.
This is for my wife to be able to have a simple amp (using my little
Asus Eee900) for when she is playing her guitar and needs a bit of a
boost.
As a part-time musician, I would suggest that playing guitar over the
typical computer speakers is going to sound terrible, if you make it
work at all.
(It may be difficult to make it work, because a guitar pickup,
whether magnetic or acoustic, is at microphone level, and the
computer sound programs
would tend to resist putting a mic input out thru local speakers, due
to acoustic feedback concerns.)
Thanks for the valuable response.
We have a real old pickup, her brother's from some 30 years ago. I
have a USB sound card (Sabrent) that I was going to use for the I/O,
then some small external speakers. Just something small that she
could take when it was a little larger venue than a living room.
However, there are relatively cheap solutions that do not involve a
computer at all.
The cheapest is to look for a low-powered guitar amp on Craig's List,
or at local garage/yard sales. I have found two, so far, one of which
is maybe 10 Watts
and would work fine. I paid $10 for it. The next cheapest is to get
a student amplifier from a commercial source. Looking at the
catalog, "Musician's Friend"
for last December (the latest one I have) on the inside back cover
there is a Starcaster Guitar Amplifier, "The perfect amp for
beginners with 15 watts
of power." The sale price was $39.99. They claim it lists for $99
MSRP. MF stock number is H96133.
I don't know if this is still available, but something like this
probably is. ON the page, it says, Visit *musiciansfriend.com/dealcente
*(I don't actually use the little amp for guitar, I use it as a
monitor for a record player. I have a 1959 Fender Bassman that I use
for gigs on electric
piano and guitar. Your wife should not try to actually play a gig on
a little bitty amp like I have described.)
Whatever I get has to be RF shielded. We live 600' from a 700' FM
tower with 5 stations at max wattage. A lot of unshield stuff just
does not work in our home (we fought the tower, but there is a 400'
near it that was here before the community was build up).
It's possible that a small transistorized amp will be "sort of"
shielded--it may be enclosed in a metal box. If you have a problem,
there are a couple of simple
things to try: get some snap-on ferrite shield beads. They cost about
$2-3 each. put one or two around the AC poser cord right where it enters
the amplifier chassis.
Put one or two around the wires to the speaker(s). Put one or two around
the guitar cord, just at the plug where it plugs into the amp. Put a
couple at the other end of the
guitar cord, where it plugs into the guitar. Unfortunately, the next
things require some surgery on the inside of the amplifier. If you're
not into that sort of thing,
you should probably try and find somebody who is, like an electronic
tech or a radio amateur. He will experiment with some small capacitors
at judiciously selected
point, like right at the input jack, and right where the speaker wires
exit the chassis, and probably from the AC power line inputs to chassis,
where the lines come into the chassis.
At the speaker wires and the AC lines, I'd start with 1000pF. That's
likely too big for the guitar input port, so maybe 100pF at that
point--you'd have to listen and see
if it louses up the treble. There are also some small ferrite toroids
that could be installed on some wires inside the amp. That would
involve unsoldering the wire, slipping the
core over the wire, and soldering it back. Killing RFI is as much art
as it is science, so some trial and error is to be expected!
If you install all the suggested fixes and it works, try removing one at
a time, and see if that's the sensitive point. If you see no difference,
you might as well save that ferrite
for some other application.
Another idea: play in the basement, if you have one!
--doug
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