Recording Electric Guitar On A Budget

So it's been a fair while since I posted anything and if you'll pardon me, we've all had exams and after a hectic week of band work I'm now somewhat more free. And so here we are again another blog! This is another of my sort of 'budget' blogs - if you haven't noticed I'm rather short of money. I'm going to run you through the two main ways of recording electric guitar on a budget but still with pretty high quality results.

We don't all have a multi-million pound recording studio in our garage, yet technology has advanced so much that we can achieve remarkable results for a fairly low budget. As you'll see throughout this post I'm going to spending my imaginary budget on gear, showing you the pitfalls and the tricks in order for you to (hopefully) get the best results. For those of you who are completely new to recording maybe check out THIS blog as it will run you through some basics of the home studio. I'm tailoring this post more towards recording electric guitar - the other post is somewhat more generic. I'm going to work with 2 budgets here - one for amateur recording/playing (£100) and one for intermediate recording/playing (£250).

Amateur budget (Interface, cables/headphones) - you may think £100 is a lot of money, or next to nothing. Now in recording terms £100 is handy but it won't build you a high quality studio. What it will do though is give you the bare minimum. First things first, you need an audio interface. As I said on the other blog post this is like a controller - you plug into it, and it sends the signal to your computer. If you will, it acts like an amplifier would - indeed that's exactly what it is. This little Alesis iO2 costs around £80 and will do the trick nicely. Its USB so you can plug it into any laptop. You've also got 2 channels for mic/line in so you could record with a microphone or an electric guitar output straight from the jack. If you're looking at buying a microphone then you're going to spend over the budget.

However if you also download a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) such as Reaper (great software) then you can record with this absolutely fine through direct input (DI). There are also plugins in your DAW to tweek your sound and you can even download AmpSimulators to dial in distorted and overdriven tones. Your excess £20ish could be spent on cables, or a pair of over-ear headphones - these headphones work a treat.

Intermediate budget (interface, microphone, cable)- here you can really have some fun and whats great is that this gear will last for a good long while as long as you're kind to it. So we start with £250. First things first we need an interface. Instead of going through USB however we're going to use firewire. This is effectively a more advanced and faster version of USB so you will get less audio lag and be able to record more channels at the same time. The interface above will work fine but it may well suffer after a few years and it is incredibly limited. What you see to the left is the Focusrite Pro 14 interface. This is firewire and extremely high quality (and brilliant - both Jim and I use them). On the front you've got 2 of Focusrite's legendary preamps and on the back and other two instrument inputs. This is going to cost you about £160 (from Gear4music) which is well over half the budget. However the trick is that this thing will last and will keep you happy for a good long while.

Next you're going to need a microphone. There is a great trick to be found here as you can get something multi-purpose - the Shure SM58. You may know a little about recording and think 'I thought SM57 was for recording, not the 58?'. Ah well, multi-purpose, like I said. Having tested both I can safetly say that the difference in two microphones comes down to that one has a grill, the other doesn't. The great thing is, you can't really use a 57 for live work for a singer yet it's industry standard to use a 58. So go for the SM58 as oppose to the 57. Some of you may dislike me for saying this - I care not. You don't even need a stand - just get a pile of books and balance the mic on top (little tips and tricks people!). That mic will cost you £81. You've got around a tenner left to spend on an XLR or whatever you may need. So this budget will give you the capability to record both through an amp and through DI - all you need!.

So there you have it! Need I say anything else? Of couse if you don't have a guitar, a PC or a guitar cable then you may need to include those in your budget! However these two outlines should give you some guidance. Any questions just post below!

Peace, Linus