http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-Fast-Track-USB-Computer-Recording-Interface?sku=703606V

My friend has an Apple laptop with GarageBand.

He has a cheap little 1/4 adapter he got from Radio Shack.

We're looking to record a project. He'll do the drums and I'll do the bass and guitars. Hey, this isn't 1975 and we're not Fleetwood Mac. We're doing it on the cheap!

He told me that all I have to do is plug a guitar directly into the little adapter thingy to lay down tracks on GarageBand. However, the prerequisite is that the guitar be active as opposed to passive. Or at least that's what he told me. The adapter isn't powered, so the juice has to come from somewhere.

My 5-string fretless is active; all my other basses ain't. Also, none of my guitars are active and I don't feel like shelling out a few hundred bones just to get a closeout deal on a low-end used one. I dislike guitars with active pickups anyways.

He said I could run a line out from one of my amps. But my guitar amp is a piece of crap... not even sure it has a hole for that.

So, with all that said... could I purchase the above item, as is (see the link)...

...plug it into his laptop...

...fire up GarageBand...

...and after a few seconds of him futzing with it, plug my passive pickup guitars directly into that thing to record on GarageBand?

Please tell me it'll be that simple. Please.

i've never messed with GarageBand, but yes, it should be that simple.

the instrument input will do what you want with your passive instruments, both guitar and bass. it may not sound that great, but it will work.

good luck!

What's a good (and inexpensive) powered input that would compensate for the... passivity? Hopefully the modeling offered by GarageBand would compensate for the... non-activeness. I won't get to find out for myself until the end of this month when I swing through L.A. (hometown) to see friends and family for a spell.

That is not true. You do not need and active instrument to make that work. A preamp and DI box would be more ideal but what you are trying to do will "work" the way it is. Its gonna sound rough to say the least.

I done what you talking about with both my PC and Mac laptops and both active and passive basses. The GarageBand effect will give a little extra tone to the bass, but don't expect a lot.

Hey, what about this little bad boy?

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/MAudio-MobilePre-USB-Portable-Audio-Interface?sku=701368

How good would a passive geetar sound if run directly into it?

If it's that much closer to "ideal" than the other cheaper doo-hickey, I'd be willing to spring for this not-as-cheap doohickey.

Also, I get the impression (from the user reviews) that you're somehow supposed to hook it up directly to the laptop's soundcard if you wanna record, rather than running it through the USB port. Maybe my computer nerd buddy can figure all that out. Is there another gizmo that would help considerably, such as one of those miniature soundboards that Behringer makes?

I could also spring for one of these bad boys. I read through the reviews and it would appear that it'll work with GarageBand. I wanna stick to GarageBand because my friend has figured out every last in-and-out to it, and time is precious so we don't wanna waste any futzing around with new software (it comes with Cubase LE).

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Lexicon-Lambda-USB-Audio-Interface?sku=245506

I'm not looking to have it sound like Emerson, Lake, & Palmer or anything. We're going for "bizarre" and "nasty" over "studio magic", you could say. But on the other hand, I don't want it to sound like it was recorded in mono on a boombox in a metal trashcan. We're a good bit more advanced musically than, say, a bunch of 16 year olds in a hardcore band, c. 1982, trying to record into a decrepit four track they got at a pawn shop in exchange for stolen power tools.

He told me that all I have to do is plug a guitar directly into the little adapter thingy to lay down tracks on GarageBand. However, the prerequisite is that the guitar be active as opposed to passive. Or at least that's what he told me. The adapter isn't powered, so the juice has to come from somewhere.
Well, your friend doesn't really understand this at all. You will be able to record a passive bass or guitar just using this adapter. The juice comes from the motions of the string through the magnetic field around the pickup.

The real issue is that a guitar's impedance is just too high to get quality sound. You need to plug it into something with a high-impedance input for that, and the computer's built-in input is not one. An amp has a high impedance input, and so does something like the M-audio unit you first linked.

EDIT: Every piece of gear linked here is a USB audio interface. You use it to record rather than the laptop's lousy sound card.

If I were you, I'd consider a POD or some other sort of pre-laptop-input-jack sound enhancer.

The POD is a pretty versitile thing for both bass and guitar when you are going direct like you describe and you get the benefit of being able to push more signal - not to mention the amp modeling and effect.

I also use a rather inexpense (ok, cheap) mixer as a go-between. I have a Phonic 10 channel that I picked up new from Mars (before they went belly-up) for about $50. You can run out of the "Phones" out into your laptop's in or, with more adapters and such, you can send a signal from either the tape out, control room L and R or even the main L and R adapted with a Y to your laptop in...

That M-Audio interface looks just fine too. I would just avoid plugging either the bass or the guitar in to the laptop "naked" - it will work, but I am pretty sure you would like a little processing and signal enhancement more.

Use a POD.

before I got my interface my room mate had the same one you're looking at and we used it to record. You'll be able to set it up simply, and it'll sound alright. You kind of get what you pay for, but it's a good deal. GarageBand also has some pretty cool effects that you can tweak and you can actually get some pretty good sounds for free software. And it shouldn't matter that your bass is passive, I recorded with one too.

i've never used one of these but i have considered getting it myself because i'm a huge fan of IK Multimedias stuff (gots lots of their software):

http://www.stealthplug.com/Main.php?prod-SP.php

lemus821 is right, using the audio in jack just isnt going to sound good no matter what you use. the USB converter boxes are the sound card for your inputs. and using these with garageband will sound much better and should be pretty easy to set up.

You don't need an interface for GarageBand for guitars or basses. You can get killer tone by plugging straight into the computer with the 1/8" adaptor. There are plenty of effects you can mess with, but I usually record dry, and it's fantastic. Passive instruments work just fine.

You DO need an interface if you're recording vocals to amplify mic signal. The M-Audio MobilePre USB works great, and is inexpensive.

i've never used one of these but i have considered getting it myself because i'm a huge fan of IK Multimedias stuff (gots lots of their software):

http://www.stealthplug.com/Main.php?prod-SP.php

lemus821 is right, using the audio in jack just isnt going to sound good no matter what you use. the USB converter boxes are the sound card for your inputs. and using these with garageband will sound much better and should be pretty easy to set up.

That looks like a cool product. Yet another USB product for me to buy,like, and not use going back to my mixer and desktop with an Audiophile card... I think that would be perfect for garageband.

You don't need an interface for GarageBand for guitars or basses. You can get killer tone by plugging straight into the computer with the 1/8" adaptor. There are plenty of effects you can mess with, but I usually record dry, and it's fantastic. Passive instruments work just fine.
Maybe for bass, if you're content to get no highs. Guitars sound sort of okay-ish, but you can't do anything with the tone.

That looks like a cool product. Yet another USB product for me to buy,like, and not use going back to my mixer and desktop with an Audiophile card... I think that would be perfect for garageband.


i would consider that more for portable applications too.

Maybe for bass, if you're content to get no highs. Guitars sound sort of okay-ish, but you can't do anything with the tone.

Of course you can. You can get all kinds of tones. I'm not saying using an interface is a bad thing - it's not. But as someone who has recorded many bass and guitar tracks on GB without one, it certainly can be done.

Of course you can. You can get all kinds of tones. I'm not saying using an interface is a bad thing - it's not. But as someone who has recorded many bass and guitar tracks on GB without one, it certainly can be done.
It's possible that your computer gets more highs than I would expect, but I wouldn't count on it working out that way for everyone. In my experience, it will come out very muted.

Gonna need the bass to sound good as possible, as that's gonna be our strongpoint. My friend's great on drums but we're going to be mickey-mousing the recording of those major-big-time (although he has this magic touch with cheap substandard equipment), and while my guitar playing is "unusual", it's by no means technically proficient. Tone on the guitar would help as well; in prepreation I just got my guitar all set up to what I know to be its optimum: C# with big fat .12 gauge strings (Stevie Ray Vaughn used .13s) so it's plenty tense, the lows sound like a piano when it's clean.

Hmmmmmm... after I get a decent USB interface, the main worry would be the drums, as we're basically using a single omni-directional microphone from RadioShack that we're also using for vocals.

Anybody know of a decent inexpensive mic that would be good for vocals? Doesn't have to be a fancy condenser/ribbon type thingy... just a stage mic type thing that'll cover recording good enough for our low standards.