Hammacher Schlemmer USB Guitar
- December 15th, 2006
- 7 Comments
Hammacher Schlemmer’s USB guitar is a tool for recording artists who don’t want to deal with microphones, amplifiers, outboard mixers and lots of XLR cables. The USB guitar plugs into your computer. It comes with analog-to-digital conversion software and is fairly easy to work. You can also use the USB guitar as a standard guitar, as it has a .25-inch jack output. Pretty nifty for $200, right?
The bad news is, it’s going to take a lot of work to make something like this sound good. Even with all the advanced software out today, recording artists still prefer to mic a guitar cabinet/amplifier rather than plugging the guitar straight in. If you’re set on using analog-to-digital conversion software and bypassing messy signal flow, you might want to start loading up on plug-ins for whatever software you’re using.
If you’re using Pro Tools LE, Cubase, Acid or Logic Pro Audio 7, this isn’t tough, but it’s going to cost you a lot of money. A solid plug-in sets you back a minimum of $60, and you’ll need one for each specific tone you’re going for. It all comes down to how professional you want to make your recording sound. Personally, I’d stick to microphones and amps, plugging straight in always makes the guitar sound bad.
USB Guitar Brings Recording Studio Home [gear factor]
Lydon (Who am I?)
1 year ago
That is pretty slick, though nothing sounds better than a good acoustic guitar!
drdrew (Who am I?)
1 year ago
This seems like something i would really dig. like I said before I’d really like to see one that could save what you’re playing to a drive within itself. That would be really sweet, especially an accoustic, Lydon :)
Lydon (Who am I?)
1 year ago
You know, that’s a really good idea. You would think that since pickups are normally placed inside of an acoustic, you could just pretty much have a pickup with a small hard drive.
Maybe since I work in Music City, USA I would know someone to give that idea too, but I don’t.
That’s what I get for being a computer geek I guess :)
Brooke (Who am I?)
1 year ago
This will be great for the nubile home recording junkie or apartment dweller but for anyone with the faintest fickleness for quality audio, they’ll stick with mic’ing their amps. This guitar is also competing with gadgets such as the Line 6 Pod (http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product?sku=150448) for $199.99.
The pod is an amp modeler running on a USB interface that you can actually plug any guitar into (preferrably a Strat or Les Paul)! ;)
Jay (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Not bad for a noob (beginner) but I would prefer to mic the amp and import the music into my pc the old way. But still a neat idea! Now if they could creat better software for this thing, that may be a different story.
Anif™ (Who am I?)
1 year ago
This is pretty cool. Hammacher Schlemmer seem to be releasing some pretty cool gadgets these days. It reminds be of the 150-country travel adapter.
This is obviously not a substitute for real acoustic guitars. But more so for the home musician to have something more convenient in which to practice with….just like the electric drums and such.
Another thing these electronic devices are really good for is being able to test out various sounds on the fly via software plugin setups (ex switching from acoustic to electric guitar). So it’s a way of playing different types of guitars via plugins, while using 1 physical guitar….good for the budget musician.
Manwhoknows (Who am I?)
6 months ago
This is dumb.
Firstly it isn’t going to compare to a Gibson/Fender. Secondly device latency is likely to be poor for $200 which comes in at £100, the price of a good toaster. Better off spending your money on a good sound card / 8 track machine. You are then free to use pickups, mikes and whatever and feed them into your favourite DSP/VST plugin software. So whats the point?
This is up there with the USB food blender, at best it has novelty value.
Round up, there’s nothing this can do a normal guitar/soundcard or 8 track combo can’t.