Guitar Room - Ideas

[Guitar_Dope]

Hello-

I am building a room in my house for the sole purpose of storing and playing guitars and other instruments. I have read quite a bit about the sound absorbsion that I need, but I am very ignorant about the audio portion. Ideally, I would like to put jacks in the walls that would allow the instruments (ie. instrument #1/mic #1, instrument #2/ mic#2 etc.)to plug directly into the wall. From the jacks, I would like to run audio cables to a master sound board then to speakers. Is this doable? If so, can someone recommend what I need to do or install? Equipment that I will need? Like I said, I know nothing about this, so any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks- Neil

 

[Artie]

Re: Guitar Room - Ideas

I used to do pro-audio in-house installations, so I can give you a couple little tips. First of all, is this in an existing house, or one thats being built? If the latter, you may want to run some PVC pipe where all the wires will run. This makes it real easy to pull new/deifferent wires at a later date. Also, you may want to bring all the connections to a patchbay first. (They're available at any good pro-audio store, or eBay.) That will let you decide what-goes-where in any configuration for later.

And just be sure to use good quality cable/connectors. If I can think of anything else, I'll post it.

 

[Naps]

Re: Guitar Room - Ideas

Hello-

Ideally, I would like to put jacks in the walls that would allow the instruments (ie. instrument #1/mic #1, instrument #2/ mic#2 etc.)to plug directly into the wall.

kind of like cable wires run? That would be sweet.

 

[Kac]

Re: Guitar Room - Ideas

:scratchch: Hmm Idea! Put Jimi Hendrix posters on the walls, that seems to work for me
Rock On :smoker:

 

[aleclee]

Re: Guitar Room - Ideas

What kind of instruments are you running?

Such a setup might be great for keyboards, modelers or output from a speaker sim but I'd expect a lot of tone suckage if you plugged a guitar straight into the wall bus. You'd have an awful lot of cable between your pickups and a gain stage that keeps downstream stuff from loading down the pickups.

 

[Guitar_Dope]

Re: Guitar Room - Ideas

Thanks for the inputs! Some answers to some of the questions:
1. This is a new room in an existing house (im building it in my basement). My wife has requested that I build the room to deafen the sound. I have studded walls so far, so the PVC pipe is still an option. I assume that 1" - 1.5" diameter will suffice.

2. Right now, all I have is guitars to run through the system. I do have a keyboad that I will eventually want to pipe in (for some of those VH licks). I was a bit worried about the guitar sound quality. I play an EPI LP Custom, Taylor 314 and a 6 & 12 string Ovation. When not playing out ... on real equipment, I play on a small practice amp with an ibanez distortion peddle.

I was right on the verge of buying a real amp to play at home when my wifes request came in for the room. That got me thinking of what I really wanted to do. Do you think I need a small sound board to control the various tonal qualities and effects (reverb on the mics, etc?). I don't want to spend a million bucks on this thing. Let me rephrase that ... I don't have a million buck to spend on this thing. Am I better off just running the guitars through floor amps and then running the mics through speakers? Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks - Neil

 

[Fiber-Optics]

Re: Guitar Room - Ideas

So you aren't going to be using a real amp? My ideal room would be one for practices put the padding on the walls that they sell at most music stores, keep a dehumidifier to keep alot of the moister out because its in a basement then I would stick a drum set in there my guitar amps a nice little PA. o0o then a Computer with recording stuff! that would be awesome then a bed so I can sleep in it and a little TV to watch.

 

[Guitar_Dope]

Re: Guitar Room - Ideas

Thanks for the patchbay advise. I looked on Musicians friend and they have many to choose from. Is there a mid-range brand/ model that you would recommend? I assume that all components will channel through this (instruments, mics, speakers, amps, etc). Is this correct?

In talking to a lot of people (I think I am getting annoying) it seems like a central PA system may be my best bet. This would allow me to run a variety of instruments, mics and external stereo devises through one system. Although I have been told that my acoustic guitars will sound great through the PA, there has been concern that my electric would not sound the best. Is this the case? If so, is there anything that I can do to improve the sound quality?

Much thanks-