Review: M-Audio JamLab Personal Guitar System
If you are interested in hooking your guitar up to your computer for the cheapest and most affordable price, the M-Audio JamLap is your ticket. This $59 dollar glorified USB wire with a guitar input and a headphone output. The installation is not too bad but some users have reported driver issues on Vista (go figure!). I think overall, you cannot beat the fun of this device. This absolutely makes a great Christmas gift for any new player who is also into computers. This could be a user's first digital experiment that may lead to Pro Tools in the future.
As expected, I found the digital effects to be decent for the price. Of course, don't expect the world's most incredible tone with these effects. On the other hand there is a surprising number of clean effects and amp sounds which downright surprised me in terms of quality and useability.
This is also a great learning tool. If you have no experience with digital effects, this affordable hardware and software solution will allow you to experience lots of stomp boxes and play with their sounds. Overall great item for any beginner player.
Top 10 eBay Auctions:
 |
Avid M Audio JamLab USB Audio Interface NEW Unopened |  |
 |
US $29.99 | 8h 59m |
 |
M Audio USB JamLab Personal Guitar System for Computer | |
|
US $59.99 | 17d 19h 34m |
 |
M Audio JamLab Personal Guitar System for Computer NEW | |
|
US $44.99 | 7d 10h 33m |
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
This is a remarkable interface, size, cost, sound (mine cost $30 new). The “GT” software is close to unusable. Most amp sim software is dubious and … thin, at any price. Waves GTR is overpriced, but has the best rep. Never heard it, never will! Amplitube 2 and some freeware can be tweaked. NI should stick to their excellent synths and Reaktor. The Jamlab is meant to be quiet and transparent, and not reduce sustain: neutral if you like. It is not an amp, effect or speaker sim in itself. It doesn’t consume more resources than any other USB1 interface, in fact less, but you will definitely notice the difference in CPU cycle hit on a P4, as opposed to using say a DI, preamp (or Pod) and PCI card, way more efficient in the case of a Hammerfall. And of course once your buffers go up …. Anyway, Jamlab works great on a Macbook C2D, and I prefer it to the DI on the Steinberg MI4, which is otherwise a solid box. A bad DI box can throttle guitar tone, a bad converter or interface is unusable. I get perfectly solid, full tones with the Jamlab, I suggest inserting the Cubase S 4.5 built-in VST3 amp sim (nothing special) if you have this DAW and hear for yourself, it is passable and very light on CPU for a sim. With all due respect — and I use the not-very-pro but likeable Tonelab and Pod2 hardware sims, which are really just software in boxes that avoid whacking your CPU — I have to say that someone who cannot get a fair “digital” tone tends to have a hard time with any tone and/or technique regardless of his/her equipment. Finesse? Drive and rhythm? Can you play nylon-string guitar convincingly? … Check article on band “The Girls” in Music Tech a while back on tracking, miking up an antique LP with all manner of vintage gear, big desk, on to Pro Tools etc. Then listen to the mixdown… Phew. No offence guys, but for crying in a bucket, with all that $$$ gear… my rock tones straight out of the Pod rip yours to shreds and retain dynamics and “solidity”. Try tuning your guitars… with and w/o a tuner unless your intonation is perfect, unlikely. Retune for every take if necessary. Too many chained plugins will kill tone, esp software EQ. No offence, but that issue of MT made me plain angry. Gizza job! But why bother to bang on about MY miked-up sound when I can blow away yours with only a fisher-price red box …. to be blunt but not personal. I don’t even like rock much, I just seem to know pentatonics in all positions, hammer-ons and full-chord neck vibrato along with a few other old-school techniques. Now this sounds like a flame (?), and I don’t mean it that way. I would like better computer guitar sound for all of us!… BTW there is SO MUCH bad digital guitar on incidental music, bumpers and ads… wow. It causes pain in the brain kids… Peace everyone. Just play it.