Make My PC an Amp?
 

I've got a soundblaster Audigy 2, and a converter so I can plug a guitar cable into my mic jack, and in doing this I can play my guitar pretty loud. However, my guitar is an acoustic, and I was wondering if there is any program out there that lets me change it so it's electric. I'd like to play with it a bit on electric. Any ideas?

Firstly, what do you mean turn it into an "electric"? From what I know, there is no program that can "turn" an accoustic into an electric. If you want an electric guitar sound, you either have to: a) use an electric guitar b) put an electric guitar style pickup on your accoustic c) use a hex-pickup on an accoustic and run it through some sort of processor d) run the accoustic signal through an amp-guitar modelling processor (not sure how this would sound) OR e) do some MAJOR post-processing of the sound in a program like Cool-Edit, Cubase or Pro Tools, which wouldn't be real-time play-and-it-sounds-electric. It all boils down to one thing, elecric isn't necessarily mean the sound of the guitar, but how it is "plugged" in, and the physical qualities of the guitar. In my case, I have Roland VG-8 fx processor which does acoustic guitar modelling. My guitar is electric by definition, but with the processor, it sounds like your next Martin or Taylor. If its an electric guitar sound you're looking for, you're not going to get that kind of sound out of an accoustic guitar. You could try messing around with some effects of sound editing programs, but from as far as I know, you can't do any real-time effects through software with an accoustic guitar.

if you go into the sound environment settings for your audigy, you can set it to distortion/grunge/etc to get different electric guitar sounds. It won't be perfect but it'll hold you over till you buy an electric.

Didn't know the Audigy could do that :) I'll have to check it out sometime.

Ok man, cool. Thanks, i'm working on getting a small practice amp, cause I don't have the cash to splurge on a full electric, so as long as I don't crank the volume to high, my Shecter dosen't give too much feedback. Gracias mi amigo!

The Audigy will give you a totally different sound than a standard git amp would. I play my bass through my comp (too cheap to buy a practice amp, and my amp doesn't fit in my car very well) into a technics amp. There is a noticable difference, especially when I am playing my six string. The lows aren't as good (obvious) and the highs are much more defined (obvious as well).

Just an FYI.

for some reason this brought to mind the mtv unplugged gig that nirvana did years ago. Iirc, Cobain had added a single coil pickup between the soundhole and the fretboard. It's not a pretty solution, but it's relatively cheap.

He added the electric pickup to counteract the fact he was using nickel strings on a steel string accoustic (probably because a regular steel string would have sounded awful through his DS2 pedal).