Silencing Help

[themaddog]

Hey everybody,
I'm going to moving into an apartment with my girlfriend, which means it's high time to move studio out of my parents's basement. At my parents's house I was really spoiled, because I was able to have a control room in the basement, a tracking room next door in a finished room, and was able to mic drums and guitar amps without fear of reprisal from neighbors.

I'm moving to a three family home, so there's no way I'll be able to do these things anymore. I want to scale things down to a project-type studio where I can just record myself and my ideas. Micing vox and stuff shouldn't be so much a problem, and since I don't play drums, I was just going to use a machine anyways.

My problem is mic'ing guitars. I can think of only two solutions so far, and would love feedback from anybody who has had to do this or used either method.

1-Use an isolation cab, such as this: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...mps?sku=480371

2-Use a POD XT or other similar "cabinet modeling" piece of equipment


Has anybody has any experience with the iso cabs? I've read good and bad things about them, mostly that even if you buy one, you have to do a lot of additional work to make it silent, and I'm really not handy with that sort of thing

How about the POD XT? Are there any other strictly cabinet simulators out there, that I could plug any of my amps into and give it a proper speaker load? I owned a POD 2.0, but once I bought a real amp, grew to hate the sound of it. But, I recognize that my new setup will never be able to be as good as my old one, and it's hard to resist all of the options that Line 6 offers, I just wonder how well it delivers. I used a Vetta II amps once and thought it sounded pretty damn good, but I have no idea how well their "cabinet modeling" is.

The good news is I'm keeping all my reel to reels! I also won't be selling any amps (except maybe one or two) because I still need to play live.

Thanks for any and all advice,
-MD

[Dr ZEE]

I've found THIS at HC (I assume you've seen it already....)
I never had this cabb (so have no idea), but it looks like (assuming it's not so great) it still gives you at least an extra option(s) in the situation where DI-style guitar recording is the only possible way.
AS for DI/amp-modeling - I hate it and I like it also at the same time. It was said so much about it already everywhere so no need to go through it again.
There was a pretty cool 'device' from digitech out there ... THIS ONE! ..yep, people "upgrade" from it to a pod... I would not do it (but that's subjective thing). If I would be forced NOT to mic DeVille amp, then I probably would get 2112(20) or(and) maybe something from Tech21 this stuff while still using some of my fav. pedals and just go through the life doing the best you can ...you know what I mean.

good luck... this is kind of taugh situation, I must say, ...it would be easier for you if you never appreciated amp/cab playing/micing/recording... but that's not your case ...or maybe it's a good thing...depends how you look at it