Hey there, i've been trying to record my guitar from my amp, using a lead coming from the headphone socket to the microphone in, using a step down mono jack. the sounds i get from this though are very harsh and it sounds as though theres a lot of overdrive. ( this is on my laptop and it only has small speakers and doesn't have a line in port) - perhaps this is the reason.
What way should i go about recording what i play ? ( i have a pc i could use instead, just would have been nice to do it on the laptop)
Thanks a lot
Steve
p.s. is there any software you can get to play around with what you record ?
Not a lot of luck going directly to a PC or laptop without putting some kind of mixer or converter in front of it. For now I just use my microphone input but there are cheap devices that you can get to interface it but I can't remember them so maybe others will chime in.
You can try the Audacity sound editor which is free at
If it sounds like there's more overdrive than what you set the amp for then it's probably overdriving the input somewhat. If a clean amp tone still comes out distorted then you can be assured that's one of the problems.
When you listen to your amp using the headphones, does it sound okay? I mean, aside from the distortion, does your amp have something like speaker/cab contour or something similar? You know, to get a sound like it was still going through speakers?
I notice my POD gets harsh sounding when I click off the speaker cab setting and it comes out dry and from the preamp only. You could try miking your speaker maybe?
The distortion thing though; that sounds like it would be too much signal going into the puter's mic input. Maybe you have to turn the headphone level way, way down and then crank up the record sensitivity.
perhaps, I think that the mic may not be a suitable input because its got a generally low frequency response compared to that of a line in port.
once i'd recorded it, i put the jack into the output of the sound card, linked that up to the amp through the instrument port. and then it sounded.. slightly better, not perfect though. It's a very basic amp, with no distortion built in. i'll be using my line 6 spider 2 30 at christmas so that'll probably sound better.
Cheers
The Line 6 stuff is wonderful for recording.
When you play it back, if the laptop speakers are too small, you could always plug your headphones back into the laptop and mix it that way. I tried to mix with laptop speakers once and it sounded like it was coming through an old style transistor radio - AM, not even FM. :)
The Line 6 stuff has line outs too so that'll help.
This was a test recording I did last night using my IBM T30 laptop, going directly from the amp to the built in microphone. The amp was on low (around 5) and about 8 feet from the laptop, and the microphone input volume was set at 30% in Audacity.
