Hooking an E-Guitar to a soundcard...

[rahimiv]

Just throwing this idea around cause I really dont have the money for a marshall and dont want to lug around an amp either, but are having trouble finding a digitech RP-200 (which is a GREAT product by the way) so I wonder do they have softwares out there that will turn a guitar plugged into the mic or line-in port into guitar sounds (distortions and stuff) Dont tell me line 6 because everything they sell cost an arm and a leg.

PS: I am in Taiwan so please dont tell me musiciansfriends, they wont ship outside of the USA

 

[jubei_woop]

first of all, u need some kind of pre amp to power the guitar, then software wise u could use sumut like cakewalk sonar, they should have software versions of bass pod and guitar pod, which work well. or u could get a midi guitar pickup for yr guitar and use midi sounds, which suck i kno but its a choice

 

[SomeDudeOnline]

Just throwing this idea around cause I really dont have the money for a marshall and dont want to lug around an amp either, but are having trouble finding a digitech RP-200 (which is a GREAT product by the way) so I wonder do they have softwares out there that will turn a guitar plugged into the mic or line-in port into guitar sounds (distortions and stuff) Dont tell me line 6 because everything they sell cost an arm and a leg.

PS: I am in Taiwan so please dont tell me musiciansfriends, they wont ship outside of the USA

So I wrote out my response and realized that this post is over 10 years old... ugh well my response is below anyways.

Hi, You can definitely hook up your guitar to your computer and use free software to get decent sounding effects, for an interface you can try the Behringer UCG 102 (that's what I'm using).

However, (and this is the issue I'm having) you will likely experience latency. So when you strum the guitar the sound you hear come out of your computer will be delayed. This is extremely troublesome.

I was able to use Reaper and get the latency down to 23 milliseconds but it's still problematic. What you might be able to do is install a full-duplex sound card in your computer ($20) to solve this issue. I'm not positive that will fix the issue though. All of the research I've done suggests that it will but I have not confirmed it.