Reamping Guitar

[firestarter]

OK, I'm just looking for some opinions out there.

I'm recording guitar into Logic, mainly sitting at the computer and getting my sounds using a Guitar Rig 4 plugin.

I'd like to take my raw recordings and do some re-amping (since I have an Orange Tiny Terror amp, that sounds great but I can't really run at full recording volume in my house).

My plan is to use my MacBook, USB interface and re-amp through the TinyTerror, recording the speaker back using an SM57. Latency doesn't worry me, as I can fix timing later.

My question is... should I use a re-amping box with a transformer to hook my audio interface back into the guitar amp? Collective wisdom on the 'net seems to think that I should get a re-amp box, but I can't see why. My audio interface outputs a perfectly good unbalanced signal, I can turn it down to guitar levels and I shouldn't get ground loops, 'cos the MacBook will be on battery.

Any comments?

 

[paolo-]

I haven't used one, but I have tried reamping without the special box, sounded like crap. Basically those box treat the signal so it resembles the impedance, voltage and amperage of a guitar, not that of a line out. Your amp sounds the way you are used to with a guitar signal. Try your usb box, if it sounds good then you're good to go, I found it doesn't then you know what to do.

 

[zimv20]

i've reamped using a line-level signal directly from my converters. sounded fine to me.

 

[firestarter]

I haven't used one, but I have tried reamping without the special box, sounded like crap.

Did you have a volume control on the output of your interface which you could turn down to a guitar level?

I can understand why things would sound bad if you tried to do it with a line level signal. I think the impedance matching stuff is an 'old wives tale' - after all, most pedals have buffers in them, so people run low impedance stuff into amps all the time.