Record Guitar but not with Mic -Direct Input good or Not so good?

Cubase
#1

I want to Play my Guitar and And RECORD IT.
But I want to be able to throw away the Vocal Track , if I am Mic-ing the vocal or just Record the Guitar and Sing with NO Mic-ing but with a Direct box .

Direct input box on the Guitar is the only way to do that right ?

I have an old first generation focus-rite 2i2 …which prolly doesn’t do direct in or does it badly?

Thinking of buying a Universal Audio box to replace the 2i2

Would that be one of the better choices for direct input of my Acoustic Guitar - or are there better ?

Does Direct input of an acoustic guitar sound just as good as Mic-ing the Guitar ?

#2

Lots of ways to approach this…

Your talking about acoustic guitar and singing at the same time. There is always bound to be some leaking of the vocals on guitar mic. You can try to minimise these by using a figure of 8 microphone (they have good of axis noise reduction), some kind of baffle between mic and mouth.

Do you have a pickup on the acoustic guitar ?

Personally, I don’t find ANY acoustic guitar pickup system to be good enough for a decent acoustic guitar recording…you ‘may’ get away with it if it’s part of a rock song or buried in the mix- but for a decent acoustic guitar that features in the mix…nope.

Is there a reason you need to sing at the same time as record the guitar ? Can you record a rough vocal/guitar and then play along with that without singing ?

#3

It happens that when I sing And Play together - My Acoustic guitar playing is just 100x better
But the singing is not so good.
I was thinking I could make the singing good by just recording a vocal track over a previously recorded guitar track that I did while singing and playing.

But if I don’t sing while playing the guitar … the guitar is not as good .

If I could Mic the Guitar and SING - without having the vocal be heard …that would be great
But that seems impossible

Thus the idea of a Direct in Box of some type

Yes My Acoustic has an internal pick-up …it’s an acoustic electric.
Don’t do much rock …mostly alternative and country .

#4

Nothing is impossible (more or less). You could even try to use something like spectralayers to get rid of the spill but this will also affect the sound of the acoustic guitar.

FWIW you don’t need a DI box, just plugin into the focusrite 2i2. I don’t know if your guitar pickup is active or passive but it will be fine.

No harm in giving it a try - see if the sound works for you.

#5

Cept i heard that the first generation 2i2 doesn’t do Direct in
Only starting with the 2nd generation
I will talk to focusrite and check that out .

I was hoping something like a Universal Audio box would help

#6

is there a jack input ? if so, plug it in - nothing bad will happen.

Is your acoustic pickup ‘active’ …ie does it take a battery ?

#7

Yep it’s got a battery …
So ok I’ll just Plug it in and if it blows everything up I’ll definitely buy a universal audio interface.

BTW -while the subject comes up - is there a better pickup I can have them put in my acoustic ?
Suggestions ? Spend maybe 200 max ?

#8

I suggest you film it as you plug it in…We’d all like to see it blow up…
unfortunately it won’t :frowning:

1 Like
#9

Does an electro acoustic sound exactly the same plugged in as it does mic’d up? No.
Can it sound good plugged in? Yes, of course it can. You can change the sound to suit your needs using the tools in Cubase and (IMO) can get it very close to a natural sound.
So go for it!!
If you don’t like the sound then re-record the guitar mic’d up with the the previously recorded tracks (vocal and guitar) as reference.
It’s just an idea which may work for you :+1:t2::+1:t2:

#10

Thanks for your reply
It’s prolly really a good one
But right now my brain hurts
I’ll think about it.

Such a simple answer … but it’s prolly workable