Hi BB-users. Usually I’m using my BB through home stereo while playing guitar through 15W tube amp, but I’m looking for a decent sounding option to work with headphones. I’ve read dozens of positive reviews of Yamaha THR amps (I’m thinking of THR10C) and I wonder if this amp would work with BB. It has aux in for playing with backing tracks, and people generally have positive opinions on how guitar sounds with backing tracks through THR. Have any of you tried to plug BB into aux in of Yamaha THR? If it’ll work, it would allow for late night guitar+BB sessions, which is exactly what I’m looking for.
Another question - recording. THR also works as USB interface, so it would be nice option to record something from time to time. Would it be possible to record also drum tracks from BB using THR? Would you expect some quality issues? Perfect option would be to directly recod guitar and BB drums simultaneously though USB. If that matters, THR has separate volume controls for guitar and aux.
Any thoughts and comments would be appreciated:)
Heard nothing but good things about the Yamaha THR but can’t comment on it as I have no experience with it but If I can provide an alternative and more of a budget option.
You could use a Tech 21 character pedal or similar. The character pedal is basically an amp simulator in a pedal. Signal chain would go
Guitar > Pedal Board (if you use one) > Character Pedal > Beatbuddy > Headphone Out.
There are also some options when it comes to the pedals. There is the original Tech 21 Pedals, Some Joyo Clones and also the Tech 21 Fly Rig pedals which are a combination of a Character pedal, Distortion Pedal, Boost, Delay and Reverb in one.
I have a Joyo American which I have used up until just recently getting a Fly Rig 5 and They work well with the headphone out on Beatbuddy. Volume controls on each device can adjust the mix.
The Yamaha THR10 looks like a great amp though if you are looking for a more feature rich setup.
Actually one other option I will throw out is the Blackstar ID Core amps. They use full range speakers so the Beatbuddy should sound good through them.
I have a THR 5. As to the first question, yes, you can play along to your BB through the THR and not bother your neighbors or your parents, as the case may be.
The second question is more difficult. I have a very first generation THR5, so this may have changed. When I connect the THR to my computer, I only get guitar going to the recording program. The Aux does not get summed to the USB outputs. This may have changed on later models, so you may want to look into this deeper. However, since it uses a USB 2 cable for interface, my guess is that you will only have two channels of recording. You could run the BB into the guitar input to record that. Obviously, you would need to be careful on volumes and you would want to run a “clean” amp model with no or minimal effects. But, I can’t record both the BB and a guitar simultaneously on separate tracks using the THR5. I would not find this to be much of a hinderance, as I’d rather just run the drum part, and then do multiple guitar takes on top of that.
I guess, if you are using kits that do not have a left and right split you could run from the output of the BB into the Yamaha not using the Aux, and record both simultaneously. but the drums do seem to suffer when going through the THR’s preamp.