Getting Tone For Recording Purposes |
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Getting Tone For Recording Purposes |
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May 6 2010, 01:14 AM |
I know this question is entirely subjective so I'm not going to ask "what should I get" - instead I'll ask, how did you go about finding the tone that suited you best, for recording.
Some people swear by the tried and tested method of purchasing a tube amp and mic'ing it - I've read up alot on how that is done, the diff mic positions and keeping things in-phase. Others have gone the full digital plugin route (modeling, etc.). As far as the amp route is concerned, amps aren't exactly the kinds of things i can just try on easily. I can read reviews, or go to guitar center, but I don't feel comfortable plugging in and cranking it up so the tubes really heat up and shine (read that in another forum . I can't exactly purchase 10 amps just to try them out either $$. As far as the plugin route goes, playing directly into a DAW with VSTs in the sends, requires a round-trip that will have a little latency, and plus the headphones are going to color the sound - I do have some Senheiser pros which are supposed to be fairly flat, but still. What is your personal preference for recording (not performing live), how long did it take you to find a decent recording tone, and how many tone changes have you gone thru! haha. lots of questions I know, sorry about that, but I'm trying to find a path for getting a tone that suits my playing style and predicament - I'll likely never play live, but I intend to record from home. If I go the amp route, I won't need a full stack - probably just a combo sized amp with 2x12's for something like metal? Christian A. -------------------- The more I practice, the more I wish I had time to practice!
My Band Forum: http://passionfly.site/chat |
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May 6 2010, 02:44 AM |
latency free monitoring via my line-6 pod studio UX2. No need for laggy VST plugins and it sounds good.
-------------------- ::jafomatic
http://jafomatic.net/tunes/ <-- Here lies the master collection of my collaboration and other improvisation recordings. |
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May 6 2010, 03:15 AM |
POD X3 Live via S/PDIF straight to Protools. Tone is a no brainer... Marcus Lavendell patch.
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May 6 2010, 07:02 AM |
I'm definitely going the amp route, at least for my own songs - Im too lazy to set it all up for doin recordings on the fly, eg. for MTP and REC stuff here at the forum. In that case I use a Vox Tonelab, which I in fact won in the WIKI-competetion last year. Since I mostly plays blues/rock and some jazz stuff I like the real warmth in a tube amp and when its cracks up naturally. This can be simulated quite well by a lot of simulators (check my articles "Computer Amp Simulators" in the WIKI), especially for heavily distorted sounds. But in my opinion nothing really beats the real thing, so for recording my own stuff I use a Deluxe clone custom-built in Denmark with some good mics or my Marshall.
//Staffay -------------------- Guitars: Ibanez AM-200, Ibanez GB-10, Fender Stratocaster Classic Player, Warmouth Custom Built, Suhr Classic Strat, Gibson Les Paul Standard 2003, Ibanez steel-string Amps: Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, Marshall JMP 2103, AER 60 Effects: BOSS DD-20, Danelectro Trans. Overdrive, TC-Electronics G-Major, Dunlop Wah-wah, Original SansAmp, BOSS DD-2 Music by Staffy can be found at: Staffay at MySpace |
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May 6 2010, 07:09 AM |
i use, guitar -> Y box:
one signal going into a tube pre amp -> audio interface -> DAW -> guitar rig 4 (muted in recording) thew other one going into any amp i like to play that day, usually small combos (that amp mic'd going to DAW too) so i have fun playing the real deal and at the end i got two signals, the dry line signal, and the mic signal. 90% of the time i end up using the line signal, cause 90% of the time i think in the mix, that the amp tone is not ideal, or i wanna change this or that -------------------- Check my Instructor Profile Rockers! Got a Blog too!, www.adriantracks.com Follow me on facebook and youtube! -Youtube |
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May 6 2010, 04:24 PM |
I use a POD X3 Live at home. Digital thingys like this one sound so good these days I don't see a reason miking a roaring amp.
With the band I'm using an amp miked with one Shure SM57. Sounds a little bit more true to my ears but I think that's just an effect of knowing what's a tube amp and what's digital. If I didn't know what's what I could easily fool myself I'm sure. -------------------- My bands homepage
All time favourites: B. Streisand - Woman in Love, M. Hopkin - Those were the days, L. Richie - Hello |
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May 6 2010, 05:33 PM |
Thanks for the replies. You took me by surprise - I was expecting "mic'd tube amp all the way" but I guess I'm dating myself here and need to just jump in and see what I can do with it.
I'm currently running my guitar into a BOSS ME-70 -> Presonus Firstudio Mobile -> Cubase 5sx. I've tried going straight into the FSM and using this tutorial here http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/forum/showt...d.php?t=1131250, but I'm just never satisfied with the tones I'm getting for rythm. Perhaps I just haven't picked the right VSTs yet. I'll post some samples of the tones I'm getting later. Are you guys double tracking (left & right channel -> recording riff 2x, once for each channel?) when tweaking your tone? Cheers, Chris -------------------- The more I practice, the more I wish I had time to practice!
My Band Forum: http://passionfly.site/chat |
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May 6 2010, 05:48 PM |
To a great extent digital modeling for recording has improved drastically over the last few years to a point where it is possible to make good quality home and prosumer recordings with it. To some extent whether it works for you or not depends on what you need and want, what your expectations are and the quality of your recording and monitoring chain.
Most people with home studios have to rely on digital and 'itb' recording (in the box - doing everything in the computer) and for that purpose than modeling is almost certainly fine. However, if you have access to pro mixing and recording facilities using analogue preamps, high quality mics and high quality ADC etc then you may well start to hear definite differences between a modeled amp and a tube amp. I can certainly hear quite clear differences at the mastering stage using a high quality monitoring chain and for me a well recorded tube amp wins out. Whether or not you feel that the price justifies the end though is subjective. -------------------- Get your music professionally mastered by anl AES registered Mastering Engineer. Contact me for Audio Mastering Services and Advice and visit our website www.miromastering.com
Be friends on facebook with us here. We use professional, mastering grade hardware in our mastering studo. Our hardware includes: Cranesong Avocet II Monitor Controller, Dangerous Music Liasion Insert Hardware Router, ATC SCM Pro Monitors, Lavry Black DA11, Prism Orpheus ADC/DAC, Gyratec Gyraf XIV Parallel Passive Mastering EQ, Great River MAQ 2NV Mastering EQ, Kush Clariphonic Parallel EQ Shelf, Maselec MLA-2 Mastering Compressor, API 2500 Mastering Compressor, Eventide Eclipse Reverb/Echo. |
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May 6 2010, 06:04 PM |
i use, guitar -> Y box: one signal going into a tube pre amp -> audio interface -> DAW -> guitar rig 4 (muted in recording) thew other one going into any amp i like to play that day, usually small combos (that amp mic'd going to DAW too) so i have fun playing the real deal and at the end i got two signals, the dry line signal, and the mic signal. 90% of the time i end up using the line signal, cause 90% of the time i think in the mix, that the amp tone is not ideal, or i wanna change this or that yeah, that's my perspective as well, I used to record with an amp but you only get one tone, and that's it with emulation you can tweak an re-tweak which is important to me -------------------- Visit my:
INSTRUCTOR PROFILE "If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music." Gustav Mahler Subscribe to my Youtube Channel here |
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May 6 2010, 06:08 PM |
When recording in studio. I go with two signals.
1. My bass amp mic'ed with one or two microphones. 2. Bass guitar straight to DI Box straight to mixer console. 1. Signal gives me color of the sound. 2. Signal gives me definition and cuts through the mix well Generally I know which bass sound I like so I try to dial in that tone on every amp I use live and in studio. Of course then I try to modify that tone so it sounds good through the recording console too. -------------------- For GMC support please email support (at) guitarmasterclass.net
Check out my lessons and my instructor board. Check out my beginner guitar lessons course! ; Take a bass course now! |
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May 6 2010, 08:43 PM |
What is your personal preference for recording (not performing live), how long did it take you to find a decent recording tone, and how many tone changes have you gone thru! It's a constant process of experimenting and finding the right tone with right kind of gear. Every software has it's own tone, every hardware has it's own tone. Depending on the job you need to do you choose the appropriate hardware or software I've gone through countless tone changes, and have found the tone I like, it's now just a matter of polishing that tone, it takes a while -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
- Check out my GMC Profile and Lessons - (Please subscribe to my) YouTube Official Channel - Let's be connected through ! Facebook! :) |
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May 10 2010, 03:13 AM |
I use a seymour duncan tube preamp into a line6 UX2 with pod farm 2. It's great, the tube preamp gives all the dynamic response that makes playing 'feel' right, and then I can use the pod farm to get whatever amp/reverbs etc. I want for monitoring. Plus, I can just record the dry signal only, and then re-amp the signal with the pod farm plugin, so I can modify the sound after recording as much as I like (except for the tube preamp settings, those are analog and so just get recorded into the signal). I'd definantly recommend the UX2 with pod farm for starting out. It fits into something like repear really easily. Though I have to say without the tube preamp I am not keen on using it for monitoring, it kinda feels plasticy without it somehow. The sound is right, just it doesn't seem to respond to picking the same way that an amp does and so it messes with my ability to judge how hard/soft to hit the strings and such, which makes getting a good recording difficult for me. But you can pick up a decent tube preamp for ~100 of our Great British pounds, so it's not overly expensive. I think it would sound better with a real amp, but to be honest it gets reasonably good and I couldn't record with an amp anyhow because of the noise it would cause for my neighbours. I've only done one little track with it so far which I put in the members uploads section if you want to check out the sound. All guitars were done in the way I just described. I think I've only scraped the surface of what you can do with pod farm too, so there's plenty of other sounds out there for this gear combo I think. -Adam I second that - I used UX1 for quite some time for GMC lessons and always managed to find a nice tone. For the budget - it's the best, no doubt about it. Tweed + tubescreamer will create very decent dynamics on the crunchy settings. -------------------- - Ivan's Video Chat Lesson Notes HERE
- Check out my GMC Profile and Lessons - (Please subscribe to my) YouTube Official Channel - Let's be connected through ! Facebook! :) |
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May 10 2010, 06:37 AM |
Well on retrospect, I should have invested in a POD farm and UX1 I guess, but because I thought I would at some point need to hook up to a modest combo amp and wanted to have some "take with me effects, etc", I opted for the ME-70. I'm using the Presonus Firestudio Mobile Firewire interface which seems to to do good job.
I've been playing with Guitar Rig 4 a little, which is kind of fun to goof around with - also using some free plugins to experiment with. I'm finding that the sound I get from these plugins isn't altogether different from what I can from my ME-70. I'm finding that I can't really determine what a good tone is without first double tracking then panning each track left and right in Cubase. At that point, the sound is full and the distortion I'm looking for really comes out only after I've tracked them this way. Makes getting tone a challenge since it requires tracking it first. I'll see about POD Farm. Not sure what I'll be investing in next - either Guitar Rig 4 or maybe POD Farm, but my interface is already set-up - FSM. Thanks, Christian A. -------------------- The more I practice, the more I wish I had time to practice!
My Band Forum: http://passionfly.site/chat |
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