Home practice through a hifi

wintoid

I'm still thinking about this amp thing.  We have a kind of junk room, which is a playstation/hifi/music practice room.  This is where I usually play my bass and guitar.  I was wondering whether one strategy for amplification might be to get something like an HX Stomp and plug it directly into the hifi.  Is there any reason I shouldn't do that?  I'm guessing I shouldn't use it for bass, but that's OK, I'm more interested in the guitar side at the moment.

prowla

Music plays through a hi-fi, including bass, so why not?

Just make sure you're not overdriving/distorting the hi-fi inputs.

wintoid

prowla said:

Music plays through a hi-fi, including bass, so why not?

Just make sure you're not overdriving/distorting the hi-fi inputs.

I guess that's logical...

monquixote

I've done it lots of times.

Keep the volume sensible and you will be fine.

ICBM

I use a Boss GT-1 into a little hi-fi for quiet practice.

It’s fine if you keep the volume low and the FX unit has guitar speaker emulation. Just be careful not to overdrive the hi-fi inputs as prowla said... that will cause distortion in the hi-fi which is a risk to the speakers - the speaker emulation in the FX unit won’t then work because it’s before the distortion. You may we’ll find it’s not an issue though, since guitar signals are lower level than a hi-fi line level signal and you might find you have to turn the hi-fi up further than normal (I do).

Bass is more of a risk because an uncompressed bass signal has much more extreme dynamics than the bass in a music mix. I blew my first - luckily cheap - hi-fi speakers like that...

octatonic

ICBM said:

Bass is more of a risk because an uncompressed bass signal has much more extreme dynamics than the bass in a music mix. I blew my first - luckily cheap - hi-fi speakers like that...

Use a compressor in this instance. I know you know this, mentioned for the benefit of others.

Danny1969

I used to gig with a hi fi amp, a Rotel one from the late seventies. I had a little solidstate Marshall rack pre amp and that fed the Rotel into a 4 x 12 stereo cab. Did hundreds of gigs with it. My speaker cables were a little strange but other than that it was great.

The amp part of the hi fi will be fine, just got to watch the speakers if you play at high volume. At sensible volume it will be fine

Clecko

I've done this quite a few times with old multi-FX units (Boss GT-6 for a while). It's OK, but never great. And you generally can't get very loud at all. 

ICBM

Danny1969 said:

I used to gig with a hi fi amp, a Rotel one from the late seventies. I had a little solidstate Marshall rack pre amp and that fed the Rotel into a 4 x 12 stereo cab. Did hundreds of gigs with it. My speaker cables were a little strange but other than that it was great.

A decent separate hi-fi amp isn’t a lot different from a rack power amp so not at all surprised. Usually not quite as robust but that’s about all - you might need to be careful if you were really cranking it since a hi-fi amp might not be designed to sustain maximum power in the same way as a musical instrument amp (since in a mixed music signal the average power is always a lot lower than the peak) but as long as you’re not doing that it will be fine.

Hurling_Fruitmig

I used to do this when I was at university. I had to get a bit creative with my cables but it worked fine until I could afford to buy an amp.

Danny1969

ICBM said:

Danny1969 said:

I used to gig with a hi fi amp, a Rotel one from the late seventies. I had a little solidstate Marshall rack pre amp and that fed the Rotel into a 4 x 12 stereo cab. Did hundreds of gigs with it. My speaker cables were a little strange but other than that it was great.

A decent separate hi-fi amp isn’t a lot different from a rack power amp so not at all surprised. Usually not quite as robust but that’s about all - you might need to be careful if you were really cranking it since a hi-fi amp might not be designed to sustain maximum power in the same way as a musical instrument amp (since in a mixed music signal the average power is always a lot lower than the peak) but as long as you’re not doing that it will be fine.

I remember repairing one of those Marshall rack mount power amps, the one U one with Marshall written on the transistors. There was a switch that could switch between linear flat response and (I presume) a mid boosted guitar response so could probably be used as a Hi Fi amp for someone who needed a Hi Fi amp but only had the Marshall guitar power amp

ICBM

Danny1969 said:

I remember repairing one of those Marshall rack mount power amps, the one U one with Marshall written on the transistors. There was a switch that could switch between linear flat response and (I presume) a mid boosted guitar response so could probably be used as a Hi Fi amp for someone who needed a Hi Fi amp but only had the Marshall guitar power amp

Valvestate 8008 or 8004. The switch changes the power amp negative feedback (from voltage feedback to current feedback if I remember correctly) to make it more valve-like and less damped in Valvestate mode, and more hi-fi in Linear mode.

For quite a long time I used a Marshall 400W Integrated Bass Series power amp for PA too - it sounded great. At the end of the day they’re all amps, if they deliver enough power and don’t distort then the type of speakers is far more important to the result.

andy1839

I'm running my Kemper through my home hifi.

Sounds great, especially with backing tracks playing at the same time.

BluesLover

My guitar tutor uses amp sims on a pc, playing the audio out through a Denon mini system, sounds excellent.

wintoid

Thanks everyone, sounds like I don't need a guitar amp then   Now I just need to work out how I'd also play backing tracks.

sgosden

Has the hifi got AUX in ? 

I use the headphone out of HX stomp to the aux in of a little Bluetooth speaker. 

It's along way from gigable, but is fine for sofa noodling. 

ICBM

wintoid said:

Thanks everyone, sounds like I don't need a guitar amp then   Now I just need to work out how I'd also play backing tracks.

If the multi-FX has an Aux In jack, you can connect your phone/iPod etc to that and then take the main output (or headphone output if it's more convenient to use a mini-jack cable from that, which is what I do with my GT-1) to the Aux In of the hi-fi.

thermionic

Before I got an amp, I plugged my Satellite guitar into my parents’ radiogram. It was only a record player really but had a 5-pin DIN socket for a tape deck. I worked out which pins were which (L/R in, L/R out plus a ground) and made up a cable… didn’t have a soldering iron of course so it was held together with tape. Sounded terrible of course.

I had the line out of my Vox DA-5 hooked into my main hifi for a while - sounded bigger and much smoother than the amp’s own speaker.

Danny1969

thermionic said:

Before I got an amp, I plugged my Satellite guitar into my parents’ radiogram. It was only a record player really but had a 5-pin DIN socket for a tape deck. I worked out which pins were which (L/R in, L/R out plus a ground) and made up a cable… didn’t have a soldering iron of course so it was held together with tape. Sounded terrible of course.

I had the line out of my Vox DA-5 hooked into my main hifi for a while - sounded bigger and much smoother than the amp’s own speaker.

That was my first amp too and my cable was sellotaped as well. Other terrible makeshift guitar amps were a Piano mate amplifier, a tape recorder amplifier and a modified car radio and speaker. 

I played for about 4 years on electric guitar before I owned an actual guitar amplifier. Then I got a Hi Watt Custom 100, that was my first proper amp. Bit like going from a moped to a Fireblade