Recording the electric guitar...maximizing at the source.

Recording the electric guitar.

Direct injection boxes or “DI” boxes will take your electric guitar signal and bring it up to recording level.  There is not much more to that if you don’t want to get into the impendence factors involved.  Now, you can go one of 2 ways: active DI or passive DI.

Active DI’s require power while passive DI’s do not.  So, keep in mind that any active device has the potential to self distort.

But a simple way to record the electric guitar is to hook up to the DI and then hook up the DI to a preamp (or board with gain control).

Make sure that the signal is not clipping.  But always maximize at the source and attenuate later.  That way the signal will be recorded at its most healthy state.

A healthy signal can go a long way.  On the other hand, a weak signal usually will require some advanced tweaking later.  Therefore maximize “db” levels at the source instrument.  Also, make sure that the LED meter is “hot” but not distorted. 

These are basic key elements of recording.