Recording the guitar

There are three main methods that most people use: 1) Mic: This is what you are doing now, miking the amp or guitar and recording this way. With a good mic, good accoustics, and some mic placement and volume experimentations, you can get some really good 'live' sounds, especially if you are using a tube amp. The drawbacks include the mic picking up background noises, and the fact that you may disturb your neighbors, especially when trying to do "punch in's." 2) Direct line in via soundcard: This is where you run a line from your effects processor directly into your soundcard. This in my opinion is better than the mic method, since you can record digitally, and use headphones. No longer are you slave to the dreading dog bark, cough, telephone ring or car backfire. The drawbacks to this are the initial setup which will vary depending on your music equipment and computer setup. Getting all the right cords and connections as well as setting up the volume levels can be tough. Many of the newer effects processors have simplied connection to the computer. I know that some of the Line6 Pod's have "guitar ports" basically usb connections to your computer. The higher end (but still reasonably priced) Digitech GENX processors connect via USB cables. As an aside I'll say for the record that I use digitech for effects almost exclusively. 3) Mixing board: This is similar to the "line in" method above, except you connect all your music equipment to a central mixing board, and then connect that to your computer. This is great because as you get more serious about recording you'll find that you want to hook up drum machines and have vocals and the like. Using a mixing board allows you to adjust all the levels upfront, and not have to hook and unhook each piece of equipment to your computer. With a mixer, you can have friends come jam too, and record everyone at once in a live session. Another great benefit is that mixers are cheap. you can get a really good one for $150, and decent starter ones around $60. Hope that helps.

I hook my guitar up to an effects processor and then I hook up a cable called lightsnake that allows for a usb connection. I have a macbook so garageband takes care of the rest. The sound that is recorded onto my computer is pretty good. I rarely get and fuzz or unwanted background noise. I think you can buy the cable online for like $30. It was well worth it.

Nice discussion! I think nothing beats a mike if you know how to use it. That's what they always say. I've tried it once but it didn't sound good; that's probably I've done it wrong. I plug my guitar directly to my sound card through a processor. These new models have many cabinet choices that emulate different amps and whatnot. There are also many plug-ins, probably most notably Amplitube, that reproduce amp simulation digitally. It also does lots of miking emulations so you can try different things on the same track. Recording is a very complex subject and I appreciate people who study it, and put their time on mastering the many details of this craft. Personally I don't like to get that technical; I just try to find my tone by listening and focus on the guitar work.