Recording and monitoring bass guitar through a valve headphone amplifier. How?!

Hi Everyone,

Not even sure if this is possible as I've failed so far but essentially I'm trying to use my Little Dot MK2 valve headphone amp as a preamp to improve the raw recording of a bass guitar and add warmth.

Usually I would go straight into my Focusrite interface 1/4 inch instrument input which acts as the analogue-digital converter and boosts the signal. Then I'd add effects in Ableton after the fact. This is obviously not exploiting the benefits of my valve amp which is otherwise sat on the desk doing nothing. The valve amp has stereo phono inputs and outputs (1 set of each)

My approach is this:

1 - Bass guitar to 1/4 inch input in on interface

2 - 1/4 inch output from interface to valve amp phono input (single ended cable as mono source)

3 - Phono output from valve amp to 1/4 inch input on interface.

4 - Turn up gain on valve amp and attempt to get loud enough signal to monitor and record bass treated with valve amplification.

It's not working though, I can't seem to get a loud enough signal and cranking valve amp gain doesn't amplify it's input.

What am I doing wrong? It's kind of frustrating as the valve amp works perfectly this way when I feed it input from my DJ mixer when recording records through it and then recording these back into my interface.

Thanks for your time :)

wild guess..#2 might be your problem..scarlett max line output =10 dBu = 2.4V RMS but, little dot input Max Input Voltage: 4V RMS so u might be driving the amp too low to get a decent effect..and u might want to check the i/o-impedances of those devices..

i would def do a clean bass rec via interface first and valve things up afterwards..

Thanks :)