Microbook II HighZ guitar input jack

[doswasbest]

I'm getting ready to buy one of these and have a question.

The motu website says the Microbook II highZ is dedicated for guitar with the correctly wired impedance for a passive guitar/bass etc. That's in the "audio I/o" features area.... lots and lots of sentences about how great the connector is for guitar/bass. Great... I plan on doing a lot of guitar and bass overdubs

But THEN, the pdf DOWNLOAD MANUAL for the Microbook II shows the jack and how its really great on page 4... but then says that "for even more real sound", buy the optional $40 highZ box that motu makes.

What's the deal? Is the wiring on the Microbook II box actually wired correctly for the load of a passive guitar/bass?

Or not?

If it is, and the motu website info has so much info explaining how great that connector is, why does the download MANUAL say on page 4 that I need to add the optional $40 box for "more-more" real?

What's with this "more real" option?

I'm not in the mood to have a bunch of little boxes hanging off my laptop. For a minute, I thought I downloaded the wrong manual. But it says Microbook II on it, so I'm confused.

Sorry if I come off a little ticked off on this first post, but it's taken me a while to narrow down that the Microbook II is perfect for what I need. This little guitar jack discrepancy came out about five minutes before I was to buy the box.

I sent a note to Motu but haven't heard back from them. Thought I'd check here in case there's a faster answer.

Thanks!

[doswasbest]

In case anyone's reading this, I did get a fast reply back from Motu. Which was cool.

The Microbook II highZ connector is rated at 220k ohms. The optional little add on box is 1 meg ohms.

Which apparently means that if you have a guitar loaded with active pickups, the raw Microbook II is fine.

If you have 34 guitars with passive electronics (me), the little add-on box may be more-real or whatever.

Dang... now I have to rethink this. All my old Echo interfaces are 1 meg ohms for guitar on the universal inputs and are great in the studio with my guitars.

[doswasbest]

Awww... well, I'm going to order it anyway. And the Zbox. I'll tell ya, for the money, the Microbook II appears to be a winner compared to other choices in the crowded market. At least for what I need it for when I travel. Guess I'll find out in a week or so. Wish it had a basic dsp reverb to use for monitoring-only while tracking, but not a biggie.

In 50 some years of owning and recording on analog multitracks, and then 30 some years of doing digital audio (I come from the old Linndrum and Passport MIDI days and even back to Commodore systems running kcs), I've owned exactly one MOTU product... the digital timepiece.

And that thing is STILL rock solid in keeping my 24 track tape machines/smpte synchronizers and daws etc working in sync. Never ever a problem since I bought the Timepiece new in 1997 or so.

So, I guess the Microbook should be every bit as useful for me for the next zillion years.

Maybe MOTU will GIVE me a Zbox after all this talking to myself today. Ha!

[James Steele]

I hope it works out well for you.