Ok, well first off, we've got to get some terms defined:
- Quarter-inch jack (Instrumental jack): the jack that goes into your electric guitar.
- Eighth-inch jack: the headphone, microphone, or speaker jack.
Ok, those can get confusing sometimes. For this project, you will need:
- An electric guitar
- A computer (need this for recording) or stereo system with input
- A quarter-inch jack to an eighth-inch open (You can get these at the dollar store with some cheap headphones)
- An eighth-inch jack to eighth inch jack cord
To make your own an eighth-inch jack to eighth inch jack cord (or headphone to headphone jack cord):
- Get two sets of dead headphones
- Clip off the wire part before it splits off to the headphones
- Peel off the casing a bit and twist the separate wires together. Put electrical tape around the exposed wires, making sure they are not touching.
Using your COMPUTER as an AMP.
Now, plug the quarter-inch jack to eighth-inch open jack into your guitar. Get your eighth-inch jack to eighth inch jack cord and plug one end into the microphone port on your computer and the other into the plug already in your electric guitar. Make sure your microphone is not muted on your computer, and then start playing!
Using your COMPUTER as a RECORDING DEVICE.
With your electric guitar already plugged into your computer (shown above) now all you need is some recording software. I use Audacity, but there might already be some recording software on your computer. If you want to use Audacity and make your music into mp3's, you will need an the lame.dll. It is packaged in this folder.
Here are some of my recordings:
Using your STEREO SYSTEM as an AMP.
This varies between stereo devices. If yours has an eighth inch input, you can just do the same as the computer. Mine didn't. It had the white and red type of audio input. These guys (excluding yellow, the video):
Well, there is a connector for that too, from the red and white audio to the eighth inch jack, seen in this picture:
Using your TV as an AMP.
To use your TV as an amp, you'll need the same headphone to red and white audio adapter plug. It can also look like this.
Simply plug that into the guitar (with the quarter to eighth inch jack already in) and use audio cables to connect it to the audio connectors on your TV, VCR or DVD player. Go to the input channel (could be 3, 4, or you can have designated input channels like mine) and start playing. You might have to turn the sound up louder than normal though.
Using your TV and VCR/Tivo as a RECORDING DEVICE.
To do this, simply record the input channel. This will give you a black screen with your sound, but you can feed any video you want though the video connectors. This is great for straight to tape music videos.
If you have a different problem, send me an e-mail or talk to me on aim.