Guitar Port Compare Prices And Buy

Review by Jason Jackson:

I purchased the Guitar Port from Amazon the other day, and when it arrived I was excited to see what my Les Paul would sound like though my computer. My old amp fried out a couple of years ago, and I have only been playing acoustic since. I was afraid that it might sound a little artificial. Boy was I wrong!

After only a few hours of use, I can tell you that this is going to reinvigorate my play. This product is much, much better than I though it could ever be. It sounds great! The ability to pick from 10 heads, 10 cabinets, and several effects allows you to create the exact tone needed for a given song. I have already saved 5 "tones". I can just pick from a list to grab a nice tube "warm" amp, to the heavy crunch I save for Metallica licks, to a sweet chorus with a bit of distortion for a number of rockers.

I also love the hum reducer which learns from your guitar, and removes almost all of the guitar hum. Between that and the noise gate, my guitar seems much cleaner than I have ever heard it.

A small but very nice feature is the tuner, which makes it pretty dead simple to tune your axe. There are a number of other features I have not used yet. You can play along with Mp3, CD, etc.

A previous reviewer mentioned that the online service is a rip-off and you have to watch "the fine print". I bought this product as an amp replacement, so I have not subscribed to the online service. You do not have to pay the online /month fee to use this product. All the cool stuff that I have mentioned is yours, forever.

All in all, this is the coolest guitar toy I have ever used, far better than any of the pre-amp pedals/effects that I have tried out over the years.

Review by Peter Anderson:

What I purchased is the GuitarPort (a hardware device which acts as an interface between your guitar and computer) bundled with an excellent music recording software program called RiffTracker. The GuitarPort plugs into a USB port on your computer, and you plug your electric guitar into the GuitarPort, which enables your guitar to have many great sounds; then, the RiffTracker software enables you to do professional quality multitrack recording and mixing on your home computer. Read on to better understand all this.

I've owned the GuitarPort for over a year. It allows you to change the way your guitar sounds in the same way that a word processor allows you to choose different fonts. If you want your guitar to sound the way Jimmy Page's guitar sounds on the song "Heartbreaker", you change to a preset which is in fact, called "Heartbreaker". If you want your sound to be like John Fogerty's on "Rolling on the River", you change to the preset "Rollin'". And so on.

All the presets are organized by genre: metal, blues, classic rock, surf, jazz, etc. They also include preset bass guitar settings, so you can use the GuitarPort with a bass as well. It's great: you can sound like Sabbath, Cream, The Ramones, etc. By using this device, you can avoid the expense and complexity of utilizing hundreds to thousands of dollars worth of effects pedals, and/or the expense of purchasing several different types of guitars (hollow body guitar vs. solid body guitars) to obtain different sounds.

Also, you can tweak and customize the presets, and give them a name of your choosing, or start from scratch to create your own unique sound, that you can save and get back to quickly and easily. And let me tell you, this customization feature is actually very comprehensive and sophisticated: I've created settings that incorporate echo, delay, distortion and octaves (where you can add more distortion to certain frequencies of the sound and keep other frequencies cleaner), where the sound you get out of your guitar is unique and amazing! PLUS, I've run my electric violin through the guitar port, and it's worked great for creating a truly memorable audio experience!

Much of the time I plug my headphones into the unit, so I can play to my heart's content, without disturbing the family. For recording, the RiffTracker software (which you can purchase later after buying and implementing the GuitarPort), which works quite well, allows a non-engineer to create complete recordings with guitar, bass, vocals and drums (using the drumbeats included with the software) with any number of overdubs. RiffTracker allows you to alter the volume level of each overdubbed track independent of the other tracks, so you can "mix" your final musical creation in the exact manner you desire. The vocals are recorded by simply plugging your microphone into the GuitarPort.

I e-mail MP3's of my recordings to my musically interested friends and they listen to them and give me feedback. Anyway, the GuitarPort is tons of fun and well worth it's affordable cost! I only give it four stars, because it's an electronic, computer product, and as such, it can be a pain to set up, with drivers to install, cables to set up just right, etc. I'm sure you've experienced the same type of trouble with setting up new printers or multifunction devices. So I had to struggle with it a little bit in the beginning, but overall, nothing was too difficult in getting it set up and configured.

Now, here are two other excellent and noteworthy bonus features you get when you own both the the GuitarPort and RiffTracker software. The RiffTracker software enables you to upload your completed musical compositions to a website for RiffTracker users. At this website, you can listen to hundreds of songs created by other hobbyists using this same recording technique, and you can leave comments about their songs, and you can read comments left about any of the songs you've uploaded. Plus, you can read questions and answers posted by hobbyists about using this technology, and figuring everything out. This "bulletin board" finally enabled me to determine how to record vocals with the GuitarPort/RiffTracker. This website and service is free.

The second bonus feature is that Line 6 has hundreds of pages of guitar lessons available in conjunction with the GuitarPort, plus a very clever "guitar-aoke" feature. The "guitar-aoke" feature refers to thousands of songs they have available where you can listen to the song with or without the lead guitar. Of course, the version without the guitar is available so you can play the guitar part, while the rest of the band accompanies you; plus, tabs are included so you can figure out how to play the guitar part for each song. This feature, the guitar lessons with "guitar-aoke", is available for GuitarPort owners even if you don't purchase the RiffTracker recording software. It is free for the first month you try it, but then costs seven bucks a month thereafter (if you want to continue with it.)

I hope I've been able to make everything clear about what the GuitarPort with RiffTracker is, and what it can do for you. Thanks for reading all this!

Review by J. Price:

I purchased the Guitar Port XT to try to eliminate a lot of the pedals I have in my set up while also getting a few more effects that I do not have. That was kind of a hit and miss affair. The effects built in are good. They are also highly tweekable so you can get just about any sound you want. You can't change effects on the fly, so you'd still need rack effects to accomplish that. But, for most of my purposes, I just need a distortion or overdrive attached after the line out along with a wah, envelope filer, and maybe a flanger (since there isn't one in the software).

As far as the software is concerned, it's OK but not wonderful. It's a bit of a chore to set up your own sound and even to find a preset. The former should be a chore, but the latter is a bit of a disappointment. It needs more settings available from the downloads, maybe even setting downloadable from a community blog. There may be one, but I don't know about it. I've been cheating and I've been going to Boss's website to look up other effect settings, though a lot of the effect settings there are similar to the ones in the software.

Bottom line is that it's worth the 0. If you can drag a computer to your gig and don't change effects much, this will do an admirable job. It's an interesting an fun tool if not a little limited.

Review by Karren Feldhaus:

Heard about Guitar Port from a friend that plays electric guitar and bought this for my son. It is amazing because it is now like he has a whole garage of guitars, amps and speakers to choose from. His guitar can produce a huge variety of sounds and he can replicate songs he is learning with the tone he wants. Just watch out if you have Windows 7, guitar port wouldn't work for us on the computer running that operating system. Windows xp works great.

Review by :

An incredible recording. The music is rhythmic and driving. The arrangements and original compositions are exciting. This is something for lovers of Celtic music who want some originality while still enjoying the classic celtic melodies.

Review by Clay M. Capps:

I must admit,this review is of both the CD and the accompanying book of transcriptions. The selection is quite unique, ranging from the renaissance lute manuscripts of Scotland purely traditional (and much more recent-most of the jigs, reels, and airs of today's Celtic music might sound primal, but they date from the late 1700's-early 1800's)tunes such as 'The Butterfly'. Most of the work-about three quarters-is taken from the work of 17th century blind Irish harpist Turlough O'Carolan. O'Carolan's work has a distinctive sound for the most part, equal parts baroque and Irish folk, with a few songs leaning strongly one way or the other. So be warned, this is NOT the Celtic music you would hear from traditional groups such as the Cheiftains or Altan, nor is it classical or baroque in the style prefered by Bream or Williams. It is instead a blend of, to me, the best of both genres, combining the sophistication and delicacy of early classical music with the haunting soulfulness of Celtic music. It is also a glimpse at the earliest known examples of music from Scotland and Ireland, predating the dance numbers that are recorded more today.

As a guitarist, I thoroughly enjoyed working through the book. The selections are all beautiful and impressive to hear, yet many are very, very easy to perform. Most of my playing has been acoustic rock and folk with a flatpick, so I was very pleasantly suprised to find that some of my favorite pieces from the recording were not only within my grasp (after a reasonable amount of practice!) but even primer-like, the notes by the author making each song learned a lesson in technique. The transcriptions are also in tab, which is a big plus for me and I'm sure many others. It IS good to be able to read music, I suppose (I can decipher, myself, but not sight read), but standard notation was not designed for fretted instruments, and anyway, tab was always traditionally used lutes by composers such as J S Bach, anyway, so can even be considered more 'correct' for the guitar. Just be aware that the tunes here are more archaic than what is normally heard. Tony McManus wannabes will have to go elsewhere, I'm afraid.