Macbook 13" Line-In/Guitar Question

[danistheguy]

Hey guys and gals,

I would love if someone could settle this question for me once and for all.

I've got a 13" white unibody late 2009 Macbook (not pro) running OS X 10.6.8.

I'm attempting to plug my electric guitar into the headphone jack using a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter and play it through Garageband. Now, I'm a drummer, so even this insanely basic recording setup is foreign to me.

I've gone into System Preferences>Sound and set the input to "Sound Input" so that I'm using "Audio Line-In Port". In Garageband, I've gone into Preferences and set the input and output to "Built-in input" and "Built-in output". I've got the monitor set to "On" and the input source to "Mono 1".

And yet I've got no indication that I'm getting a signal. Why doesn't this work? The guitar works when I tested it on my amp, so it's not the cables or the guitar. I've seen some rumors floating around that this line-in on this mac may not work without some kind of amplification between the guitar and the laptop. Is this true?

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[CodeBreaker]

Strange. This setup works perfectly fine for my SG and Aluminium MB. There is no need for any amplification. Actually, when you plug in the guitar, the Audio input automatically selects Line in.

Did you try to max all volume and tone knobs? Also, the 1/4 to 1/8 jack may not be properly connected. When I first used it, I had to really "screw" the lead cable in the jack.