Reamp Box from Radial

Chaos351

New member
Hello everyone!

So a few months back I got a Radial Reamp box, and I've never been able to get much use out of it. Every time I try to reamp a guitar part, it's either too weak or it's too strong. I've tried messing with the level of the DI, the level of the Reamp box, and nothing gives. I just can't find a usable tone for recording heavy guitar parts. Is there a trick to reamping that I'm not understanding?
 
The trick is to record at unity and then play it back at unity and don't use anything that's going to add gain or attenuate in between. Nobody wants to believe it, but most of the time, this requires neither a DI nor a reamp box. Plug into any old guitar pedal. Plug that into your line input. Record. Plug the output of your interface into your amp. Push play. If it buzzes from a ground loop there are usually ways to get rid of that without putting a transformer in the signal path.
 
Recording at unity means that you don't add or take away any gain to the signal.

You will need to plug into a guitar pedal and plug the pedal into a line input. Then, once it's recorded, come out of a line output into the amp. Leave the fader in the daw at 0.

If you are using the reamper, you will need to record hotter (peaks around -6dbfs) and control the gain on the way out of the daw.
 
Yeah, the point is to record the actual level that came out of the guitar itself and then play it back at that same level so that the reamp signal hits the amp the same way the guitar would have.

My suggested method does kind of assume that you have one of the many interfaces where the line input doesn't have a gain knob, or that you set that knob to 0db(unity). It also assumes that your interface's line in and line out are both calibrated the same. There are some out there which aren't for some inexplicable reason, and there are others that allow you to switch one or the other or both between -10dbV and +4dbu. It doesn't really matter which of those two you choose, as long as both in and out are the same.

A passive DI is a step down transformer, so when you run your guitar through it, it comes out somewhere between 10 and 20db quieter than already pretty low signal. Then people usually run that to mic preamp and just adjust the gain until they get a "proper" recording level, which is usually a bit higher than what actually came out of guitar, but by this point you don't really have a good idea of just how much higher.

An active DI sometimes does the opposite - it adds gain so that you don't need so much from the preamp. Most of the "instrument" inputs on interfaces and preamps also add like 9 or 10db going in. That's kind of fine as long as you actually know how much gain it's getting so that you know how much you need to turn it back down in the reamp process.

If the transformer in the reamp box actually increases the impedance, then it is acting as a step up. It makes the signal coming from the interface even louder. That trick of using a passive DI backwards does too. The reamp box then usually has a knob to turn that whole mess back down, but unless it's actually marked in db, and you actually know how much total gain has been added, it's really just a guessing game. I guess you could run loop back tests...

On top of that, transformers are reactive components which means in a nutshell that they can and will affect the frequency spectrum of what runs through them. They can also add noise and sometimes distortion. I think Radial uses some pretty nice custom transformers in their boxes, so that might not be such a big deal, but I saw the frequency analysis of the passive DI in reverse just the other day, and it showed noticeable attenuation at both ends of the audio spectrum. Granted it was at the extremes and affected frequencies that no electric guitar can put out (and no guitar amp can reproduce), but it's there, and confirmed my belief that straight wire is more reliable.
 
ashcat, this might be too much a request, but can you write a brief tutorial (like bullet point steps) on how to reamp properly?

when you say to plug in to a guitar pedal, should the pedal be off? why do we need to plug into it why not just go guitar into the line in?
 
Honestly, I don't do actual "reamping" - running out to an amp with a mic in front of it - pretty much ever. I do, however, record all kinds of guitars direct all the time, and occasionally will use guitar pedals as "hardware inserts" which is much the same thing, and in fact is often called "reamping".

The point of my whole thing is that we would like to record from the guitar that is as close to what it would be if plugged into the amp as possible, then don't change it at all, then when you play it back into whatever, it should be pretty close to what it would have been if the guitar had been plugged into the amp to begin with.

What the guitar actually puts out is completely dependent on the load it sees at the first active stage out of its jack. I don't want to get too technical, but since you asked, a typical Line input is way too low for most guitars, and that kills both treble and some overall volume. Plugging a passive guitar into a Line input is very much the same electronically as turning down the T knob on the guitar quite a ways.

Most guitar pedals are designed with an input impedance much closer to that of an amp because the goal there is also to get something as close as possible to if the guitar was plugged right into the amp. The output of most guitar pedals is perfectly happy to drive a Line input, though. The level might look a little low on the meters, but it will be pretty damn close to exactly what came out of the guitar. Whether the pedal is on or off depends on whether you want to record what it does or not, but if it's off, it very much does need to be "buffered bypass". Most Boss, Digitech, and other commercial pedals are, and since "true bypass" is such a hot pile of mojo bullshit nowadays, they will definitely tell you if they've included that "feature". You don't want true bypass for this.

That's the step, dude. Plug into a buffered pedal, plug that into Line input. If that input offers a gain control set it to 0db/unity. Hit record.

When you want to reamp, run a cable from a line output to the amp and leave all of the DAW levels at 0db/unity. Push play and adjust the amp controls like you would if you'd plugged the guitar right into the amp. It should work fine...

...unless you get a lot of ground loop noise. Then you can try plugging the amp into the same power strip as the interface/computer, lifting the shield on the cable between the interface or the amp, or sticking a 1:1 transformer (NOT a DI which is like 20:1 or whatever) between the two.
 
thanks that's helpful. why don't people just do that instead of buying reamp boxes?
crap, i only have byoc pedals i made and they say they're true bypass.
 
thanks that's helpful. why don't people just do that instead of buying reamp boxes?
Shrug. LOL. Most of the time I figure it's because nobody actually understands the principles involved, so they just buy the box that is supposed to make it easy. Honestly, though, ground loop problems are very common, and they're not always as easy to sort out as I made it sound. A proper reamp box will have a transformer in it so you mostly just don't have to worry about that part. Also, I think the relatively low levels going into the interface scare people. Proper gain staging can be important, and most folks want whatever they're recording to have "healthy" levels around that default -18dbfs average. In my experience, this isn't really necessary because the noise floor of the interface is still a lot lower than that of the guitar and/or amp on their own. Different interfaces are different, though.

crap, i only have byoc pedals i made and they say they're true bypass.
Most DIY pedals are true bypass because it's just plain easier and uses less parts. If you're into DIY, just build yourself an opamp buffer in a box. If you want to get fancy, you could add variable input-Z and/or capacitance to simulate different amps/cables, and if you want to get super fancy you could make an actual balanced output, but if you google "AMZ buffer", you should come up with a perfectly reasonable circuit and maybe even a layout or two.

Or buy a used Boss whatever.
 
thanks that's helpful. why don't people just do that instead of buying reamp boxes?

Because if you want the amp to see what a guitar would feed it, going from a line out is too hot. Some Reamp boxes step down the signal to something closer to instrument level so the amp acts like it's supposed to. If you don't care and like your amp's input to be driven like there are eight tube screamers in front of it, then go straight in from the line out. But like ashcat said, it all depends on how you send the signal in.
 
The Line output puts out what you tell it to put out. If you record the level as it would come out of the guitar, and don't turn it up at any point along the way, then you don't have to turn it down when you send it back out to the amp. Course, I'm pretty sure that's what I said in my first reply.

Most folks do all sorts of stupid shit to the level before it gets to that output, though. DI attenuates then mic pre adds some arbitray amount of gain to get to "healthy levels", or the Instrument input on the interface adds some poorly specified amount of gain and they tweak things from there. Either way, by the time it comes back out you're pretty much just guessing on where it actually should be, and you turn the knob on the reamp til it sounds about right. Why you wouldn't just use the controls in the DAW for that is another question, but it's all moot if you just run unity through to begin with.
 
...why don't people just do that instead of buying reamp boxes?

DIY approaches aside (and some can/will work for you)...a reamp box does EXACTLY what it's meant to do, without giving it much thought.

It's like the difference between a hammer and a rock...both will let you put a nail through a piece of wood...but the hammer is a purpose-built tool that just does it better.

So while you certainly can jury-rig all kinds of stuff to sorta/kinda/sometimes/maybe get you from point A-to-B in one fashion or another...some folks just prefer to get the right tool for the job.
That's why reamp boxes exist and get primarily used for reamp jobs.

YMMV... :)
 
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