Solid State Guitar Amp Forum | DIY Guitar Amplifiers

would a ruby or noisy cricket be a good preamp for PC recording?  just so to boost up the signal from my guitar.

Quote from: obelix on August 23, 2007, 03:02:18 PM
would a ruby or noisy cricket be a good preamp for PC recording?  just so to boost up the signal from my guitar.

I was asking the same question a year ago and no one gave me a good answer, so I did it.  My computer has a line in, not a mic in, this is important.  If you do this to a mic in port it will fry that portion of the motherboard quickly.  If you have a line in and run it at reasonable volume levels (I just watched the recording level on the computer and kept it out of the "red" zone) it is no problem and sounds great.  I used a little gem which is basically the same as a ruby.

mine has a mic in, have no intention of upgrading my soundcard yet, when i play my guitar directly to that, volume levels are almost non existent... would you think it would be safe to have a ruby then?

I could read schematics but still a novice in terms of how the schematic actually works.

The biggest issue is the amount of power the little gem/ruby/ any LM386 based circuit would put out into the mic in.  How important is your computer to you?  You could always give it a try, it *should* just blow out the mic in if it's too much.  But, don't blame me if you try it and it causes more damage.

ow! exactly how much power could the LM386 circuit put out?

As much as 1000mW running on 16v @ 32ohm.  The key thing is the output voltage, anything between 4-10 volts depending on power supply voltage running the chip.  The line in on my computer can take a 2v RMS input, so when I turn the volume down it is easily within the "ok" range when the circuit is running on a 9v battery. 

Here is the LM386 datasheet: http://web.mit.edu/6.115/www/datasheets/LM386.pdf

What you need to do is find out how much voltage the mic in can take on your computer.

okay thanks for the tip.