Guitar Fuzz...

[knowninpart]

I'm using a Gibson SG and running it straight into a Marshall JCM 900 (100 watt) head. That is plugged into a JCM 800 4x12 Cab with 75 watt speakers. The tubes in the head are brand new and the speakers are just fine. The gain is set at 12 (goes up to 20) on the lead channel and the volume is up half-way. For now assume that the eq's are set at 5. I'm using a Shure SM-57 mic which is running to a Behringer mixing board. This signal is runing out to a M Audio card which is running into a version of Cool Edit Pro. None of the gear (other than the amp and guitar) is more than 3 months old. The problem I'm having only occurs when I record. The PROBLEM IS...
There is a horrible hiss or fuzz in the recording. The tone of the guitar comes through nicely and has a decent distorted sound. However "behind" this nice tone is a very bad sounding tone that is extremely fuzzy. It sounds like one of those tiny mini-stack amps, that is being completely blown out. We make sure that all the levels are set on the recording equipment, from -9 to -3 db. Also, we've made sure that there is no clipping occuring anywhere in the process. Also we've tried recording at much higher levels and much lower levels but the problem persists. Is this "fuzziness" normal? Is it something that is fixed during mixing (if so, how)? If it isn't normal, what can we do on the front end to eliminate this fuzz? Please help!

[M.Brane]

First thing I would suspect is the Behringer.

I own one.

[Fusion2]

do you hear it without the guitar when recorded? or on vocals? anywhere else? it may well be a mixer adjustment...

move the mic back or off center a tad and check your reflect/vol/treb... hell, i donno i just read here all the time, but i have the same recording gear you do with an Ibanez 550/boggie dual rect and 6 other fender/5150/etc amps...

and like you am just putting it all together right now, i've never had that issue with tape though...

i had 2 SG, a standard and a custom/blond back in 71-76, wonder how the pickups are now? how old is your ax? just a thought...

please excuse... i'm sure a tech is right around the corner to anwser your question... hopefully... peace...

[Dinsdale]

This may seem ultra-stupid, but have you tried different/better cables?

I haven't been doing this stuff for very long, but I've fixed problems like this with better cables.

-Dinsdale

[M.Brane]

It just dawned on me that a freind of mine had the same problem with an M-Audio card in a newer (DDR RAM) Intel board PC running Cakewalk with '98. I had completely forgot about this.

I looked up some threads here and found one from a guy that said downgrading to an older version of the M-Audio driver solved the problem.

My friend did the driver downgrade, but he also had a monitor/keyboard switch hooked up that he disconnected, and thinks that could have been the problem too. Personally I never change more than one thing at a time when troubleshooting, but he's a drummer.

Something to try anyway.

[knowninpart]

Hey everyone. Thanks for responding to my post. Let me address some of them. All of the cables and mics are brand new (less than a month old), and we have tried using different types, as well as different mic placements.

The last time we recorded, we check the levels at every step of the process. We made sure that it was not clipping on the channel as well as on the master fader on the mixing board. Then we made sure that all of the levels coming into the M Audio Card were recording around -9 to -6 db's. So I'm pretty sure that we've got the appropriate levels set, and that there is no clipping.

About the Audio card. I'm not sure if that's the problem either. Here's why. Before I bought the M Audio card I was just using the audio card that came with my computer (SB Audigy) and plugged it into the microphone input (using an RCA cable from the tape out of the Mixer). Anyway, when we used it, the same thing happened. I'll try it again though just to make sure.


OK, any other input on the situation would also be appreciated! Thanks!

[M.Brane]

I talked to my friend and he told me that he never did the driver downgrade. I thought he had.

He unplugged some fans inside the computer, disconnected the switch, and the noise went away. He has since hooked the switch back up and no noise, so it musta been the fans.

I do not know which fans he disconnected, and how they move air inside the case, but he says it's running fine temp. wise without 'em. He built the machine himself for Gigasampler, and it has 7 fans in it. I definately wouldn't turn off any fans that move air for the processor, PS or hard drives.

Another possibility.

[Fusion2]

i read "ahem" here or on some music forum not long ago about a guy useing an m-audio card and winXP haveing crackel pop issues, there is an updated driver for XP, i've installed it and the system sees it fine but i haven't set cubase up on the system yet... one more thought...

does it distort on other instruments? drums? bass?