Recording Electric Guitars

Production Recording Techniques 1
#1

View the full lesson at Recording Electric Guitars | JustinGuitar

#2

HI this is my first post

i have a fender mustang GT amp with a USB connection that i can plug into my laptop and have downloaded Audacity to record it

when i play it back what i have recorded through Audacity the sound quality is vert poor and quite however if i import an audio file and play it back its is much louder

can anyone please advise

thanks

Derek

#3

hi @DerekC1 There are quite a few alterations you can make under effect in the menu bar at the top of the screen.

You can amplify the audio and change a few things that may make it sound better.

If things go awry you can undo under the edit menu item. HTH

#4

HI Thanks for your reply

i have the microphone and speaker controls set to max on Audacity

can you please tell me what else i could do

#5

Welcome to the community.

I don’t know the Mustangs, but on a lot of amps and other systems with USB recording, the amp itself has a control to set the recording level.

This probably isn’t exposed as a physical control. It may be hidden in the settings if you go through the menus, or it may be something you can change using the Fender app.

The aim is to increase the signal level, but to make sure it NEVER reaches the top. You may need to experiment a bit to get a decent level.

By the way, the technical name for making these changes in recording level is “gain staging”.

The alternative is (and I believe this is what @bigbird was suggesting) is to do some post-processing on the recorded signal to increase it’s level. This is NOT the same as setting the speaker and microphone levels.

What you should do is to apply some level adjustments to the recorded audio using the Effects menu. In here you should find a Built-in effect called Normalize. If you select this, it should increase the level of the recording to its maximum.

Cheers,

Keith

#6

HI Keith

thanks for your comments

i have adjusted the eq setting son the amp but it still sounds the same
would it be better to try and connect form the amp headphone socket to the laptop USB port

or just accept that i will have to mike up the amp

if i do that would i still have to but an interface to connect the mike up to the laptop even although the GT has an inbult interface

Thanks

Dereh

#7

Hi Derek,

You can find the Fender Fuse app on the Internet and download it. There, on the advanced amp tab, you will find the USB gain knob which you can adjust the recording level with.

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#8

That won’t work at all.

Can you post a recording of the sound you are getting so we can try to work out what the problem is?

Cheers,

Keith

#9

Hi Keith

i have attached a snap shot of the audacity setting and wave from

i have tired to attach a recording of the sound coming back through my laptop but it wouldn’t let me attach an .AUP type file to this message

appreciate any advice you can offer

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#10

You need to apply Normalize to that track, as I described above.

Cheers,

Keith

1 Like
#11

H

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Hi Keith

got it working now using the normalised effect in Audacity

thanks for all your help

Derek

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