Maplins USB Guitar

[BlasterBates]

I now play my guitar through the PC. Definitely a good way to go. I have a speaker the size of an ashtray but it sounds gr8.

Might be worth going to the music shop and trying out alternatives, including small amplifiers.

This package is very cheap, but it might sound really awful. Better to spend a 200-300 on a decent guitar and PC package, USB pre-amp, or small amplifier, whatever. The main thing is try it in the shop, and get what sounds good.

With a "normal" guitar obviously it means he could go a plug into anyone else's amplifier and play with friends.

[TestMangler]

For £60 I got an electic ukulele.

Exactly........a ukulele. If the OP had wanted to hold a door open or prop up a shaky table, I'd have suggested that.

[NotAllThere]

For £60 I got an electic ukulele.

[Cliphead]

Aside from the guitar being cheap quality and probably difficult to play and keep in tune the main issue connecting to a PC will be latency. There's likely to be a noticeable delay between playing a note and hearing it back through the PC.

Depending on the quality of the soundcard use an ASIO driver to get the best results. If you don't have a suitable driver you can use this excellent free driver;

asio4all

Aside from being able to use the bundled software you can also route the data through a sequencer such as Reaper which is free (well shareware but unrestricted).

[Bunk]

For £60 it's probably worth a look. Not sure what the quality of the guitar will be like though. Probably has action you could walk under.

[TestMangler]

You'd probably be much better off with a cheap(ish) electric guitar.

Trouble with recording on to PC is usually that the A/D converter pre-amps are crap on the cheap models.

M-Box stuff is good but expensive. Budget A/D converter for Pc is the sapphire 6 at around £150

[cojak]

I use iRig for that kind of thing.

[d000hg]

I'd probably get a cheap electric with a normal line-out so I could use it without a PC, unless it does that too.

£60 for a cheap electric isn't bad though so on that basis, doesn't sound a bad way to go.

[Normie]

What do our resident guitarists think about this electric USB guitar:

ION Discover-USB Guitar

Wondering whether it will much fun for me and my 10 year old lad. He's had some acoustic guitar lessons - moving on from playing single notes to basic chords now. I used to be able to bang out a few songs as long as the chords weren't too difficult. Neither of us has ever touched an electric guitar - thought there might be some fun to be had trying out the different effects that come with the software package. Only 60 quid delivered, so might order it later.