Any problem playing my electrick guitar through an A/V receiver?
 

I'll be picking up a Denon AVR-1802 receiver in the next couple of weeks, and I have a slightly unusual question, I suppose:

Is it safe to play my electric guitar (or other electric instruments, such as a drum-machine) through the receiver? In other words, is there any chance I could damage the receiver or my speakers?

I have a guitar-effects board that I usually have plugged into my 4-track cassette recorder. The 4-track has line-out connection which I was planning on hooking up to my receiver (right now, the only way I can monitor what I'm playing or have recorded through the 4-track is via headphones).

Will this be an okay setup?

Thanks!

If the line out is RCA, you should be fine. Watch your level settings at first and start out low and listen well to how your speakers are behaving. Don't throw any distortion effects in intitially so you can hear how the speakers are reacting and you can more easily detect distortion in the system (distortion from the system is definitely bad here). Same thing with drum machine and keyboards.

Be aware that most rigs that are used playing out (most of those speakers are 4 and 8 ohm by the way just like their home counterparts) have more and beefier power, especially if seperate amps are used. And also, pro live sound speakers almost exclusively use horns to produce/reproduce high frequencies. These are usually more efficient (louder with the same amount of power if compared to most home speakers) and the highs have a different, more penetrating characteristic due to the nature of horns.

Basically, if you are used to playing out, and you try to make things sound the way you are used to, especially if you really try to rock out, bad things will undoubtedly happen.

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, it's an RCA line-out.

I definitely don't intend to use the Receiver/Speaker combo as a replacement for a guitar amplifier. But it'll be nice to use them when I'm just playing around in my room.. being able to get some nice stereo-effects from my effects-board.

It'll also be very useful if I want to play my guitar or bass along with my drum-machine.. ie: I'll have my drum-machine running through the receiver/speakers, and play along with a regular guitar/bass amplifier. Along the same lines, I'll be able to use my stereo speakers as monitors for recording and mixing on my 4-track (as I mentioned in the original message, I currently can only do this through headphones).