Boost Pedal

[John Abbett]

All,

I'm just getting into pro-tools. I bought one that has a m-audio interface from best buy. It works great, but the levels are a bit low. I can adjust with plug-ins, but I would like the input to be a little higher.

I could use one of my pedals from my pedal board, but they all do something. Like the delay pedals, etc. I don't want to take them out.

Is there a pedal out there that allows you to increase output, without adding gain? I don't want distortion, I just want to increase the input level to the computer.

Failing that, what is a cheap pedal that has a level button that doen't use the level button as gain?

-john

[Tim37]

well theres plenty of clean boost pedals ou there

http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product...edal?sku=157037

or a emg pa2 or the emg ab afterburner are both clean boost but there on board i guess you could put them in a small box.

[Paul Marossy]

There's no such thing as a booster pedal that has no gain. It can't boost anything without some amount of gain. Otherwise, it would just be a unity gain buffer or something like that.

Anyway, yeah, any "clean booster" should do the job.

[psw]

I was going to suggest an audio interface, but clearly you have one. Not familiar with that one, I have an edirol UA-25 that is preamped and limitered and even midi...

But, perhaps your guitar isn't putting out enough gain...is this the kind of interface that takes instrument inputs, or designed for hooking up RCA plug things like a CD player?

If so, it may well be loading the high impedance guitars so some kind of buffer will help or fix this mismatch.

Most stompboxes, all Boss pedals for instance, have a buffer in them even when off...so if you plug into something like this, then from there to the interface, you will create a buffer and match the impedance expected by such interfaces.

If you have some kind of compressor pedal, these can be useful anyway, takes out the peaks that can spike distortions. Digital distortion generally sounds pretty bad, it's not like running tape into the red to get a warm squashed effect...it becomes harsh and abrasive, so you want to keep digital recorded signals way out of the red.

It's not clear what you are monitoring the computer with, headphones are generally good, but if listening to stuff with computer speakers, the tend not to cope too well with running an instrument like a guitar into them...guitar amps are of course quite different to plugging into a stereo system, they are built to deal with such signals...sometime the monitoring system just can't handle what it's trying to reproduce. It can drastically affect recordings if you don't hear what things really sound like...that's why monitoring systems for DAWS are so incredibly expensive. Decent headphones though generally give you a good idea of what is going on though.

Good luck with it...

pete