Cabling routing for an analogue mixer to Quartet

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by mike.a.d.vowles

Again thanks to all for the info. I am not sure how I ended up with Pro Tools as all I wanted originally was a DAW to enable score edit / print ability during composition of new songs. Now I have a tool which allows me to record and mix, a quantum leap from where I planned to be! So I thought of setting up a small studio with a client base of 1. I have all this gear lying around doing nothing so....

One of the problems I picked up when I first started was a lot of Bass buzz from my Fender Strat, feeding it straight into the Quartet, same problem with the 12 string and the Tokai, the Bass Guitar was a nightmare. Keyboard did not sound too bad at all. So I thought perhaps a mixer in the loop would be the way to go to feed in and out of the quartet, if that makes sense to anyone.

All I am trying to do is have fun with my music.

Originally Posted by zedhed

Judging by what you say you are trying to achieve, I'd say to keep it simple and ditch the mixer. If all you are doing is recording guitars, adding a component into the signal chain is not going to fix any noise problems and the quartet is fully capable of handling your I/O needs.

The "Bass Buzz" is most likely a ground issue or faulty guitar cable.

Agreed - ditch the mixer as it's only another source of noise.

Where that buzz is coming is is by way of the pickups in the instruments and would explain why to a certain extent the keyboard didn't sound so bad. To explain further: there are two basic types of guitar pickups - single coil and humbucker types (we'll leave piezo pickups out for the moment). A single coil pickup is just that - one large coil of wire wound around a form to help convert the vibrations of the string in the magnetic field of the pickup to an electrical signal and thence on to the amp. A humbucker type has two coils that are wound and connected together to help cancel out the AC mains noise that is radiating all around us. Strats tends to have single coil pickups and Les Pauls tend to have humbucker types. There are some Strats that have humbuckers but more likely than not yours has single coils. Your bass probably also has single coil pickups. Hence the noise. Fender Jazz basses have single coil pickups for instance.

You don't say whether the 12 string and the Tokai (whatever that it) are electric or acoustic guitars. Good quality acoustic guitars probably have a piezo type pickup that translates the vibrations into an electrical signal that doesn't encompass a magnetic field.

There are some things you can do to minimize the noise generators. Got an old fashioned computer monitor with a crt screen - ditch it and get an lcd/led monitor. That old style crt TV - huge noise generator as are any flourescent lights those bleeping cfl's. Next time you got to record with the Strat try changing positions around your recording space and see if there's a good spot where there's no noise (technically it's called hum) and record from there with a long cord on the guitar. And make sure you have a good quality cord to go from the guitar to the interface. Monster Cable not needed despite what they may claim.