how do u like to record guitars??

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nascentjunkie

New member
ok bascially i want to know how all of you on here record your electric guitar tracks. For both clean and disorted that is... I have been having a bit of trouble and i want to see what others are doing and work off of that. So please discuss all the things in the signal path you use and what you do in the mix.. i know that is a ton of crap usually... but hey, what else are you all gonna do?? I mean your on here!! haha.... ~Andrew
 
A good guitar, through a good-sounding amp, played by a good player in a good-sounding room.... captured by a well-placed/well-chosen mic attached to a good mic pre going into a good A/D converter.

Easy!
 
nascentjunkie said:
ok bascially i want to know how all of you on here record your electric guitar tracks. For both clean and disorted that is... I have been having a bit of trouble and i want to see what others are doing and work off of that. So please discuss all the things in the signal path you use and what you do in the mix.. i know that is a ton of crap usually... but hey, what else are you all gonna do?? I mean your on here!! haha.... ~Andrew
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What kind of gear do you have, and what kind of sound are you looking for?
 
Blue Bear (above) lays out the ideal signal chain. But how do you deal with studio setups where one or more of the ingredients is missing. Many home studios lack an amp or, due to noise/space constraints, don't have the luxury of recording a live amp in a quality room. For those people, a DI box of some sort is usually the only resort.
 
I also think Blue Bear Sound nailed it on the head. I also think if you want your electric guitar to have kick ass balls and need to go direct... use a Parker Fly into a Mess Boogie Vee Twin preamp before the recorder.
 
also think Blue Bear Sound nailed it on the head. I also think if you want your electric guitar to have kick ass balls and need to go direct...
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I realize some peoples recording situation makes it hard to crank up an amp and mic it (nobody wants the cops to knock on their door)....but
I like a miced amp so much better than a direct sound....even a cheap ass amp, when miced properly, has more depth to the recorded guitart part than going direct.

thats just my experiance....I haven't tried ALL the direct guitar recording devices though
 
jimistone said:
I realize some peoples recording situation makes it hard to crank up an amp and mic it (nobody wants the cops to knock on their door)....but
I like a miced amp so much better than a direct sound....even a cheap ass amp, when miced properly, has more depth to the recorded guitart part than going direct.

thats just my experiance....I haven't tried ALL the direct guitar recording devices though
Click to expand...
Ditto that. Unless I'm specifically going for a character sound only obtainable through direct recording, I'll mic an amp. Direct electric guitar always sound flat and one dimensional to me.

________________
Post indie electronic
Meriphew
www.meriphew.com
 
My setup consists of one of my electrics (Strat copy or Epiphone) into a tube amp using an amp modeler as a distortion fx pedal. I keep the gain lowest for the heaviest distortion with an SM57 parallel to the right edge of the amp pointing about an inch inward to the cone. The amp is in a chair in a walk-in closet, and batteries used instead of wall warts wherever possible. The mic is hooked up to an Art Tube Pre going straight into my recorder.

The second guitar is usually a straight DI from the amp modeler. I pan at 3 and 9 when mixing for the best of both worlds.

Cy
 
My favorite path is prety simple. It starts with a great player, playing a great guitar (which is setup perfectly), into the right amp for the song. Mic the amp with two mics (I like an RE-20 and a DPA 4011). SSL preamps going straight to 2" tape at 30 ips, with no noise reduction. You probably won't need any compression or EQ. If you do, Distressors are nice, as are LA-2As. As for EQ, there is nothing I like more, ever, than a GML 8200.

If, on the other hand, you don't have the money for a $225,000 signal chain, it is hard to beat a 57 into a decent preamp.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
I record a strat and a ibanez iceman through a marshall 50w superlead (1979) into a 4x12 30w celestion marshall cab (1976). I use a sure 57 and sometimes a Rode classic valve mic set to cardoid to complement the 57 but not often. I have the 57 right on the cloth or closer. the 57 goes through a Joemeek VC6Q preamp then into Alessis AI3 converters then to hard drive. I use slightly less distortion than I think I need. Good habbit. By the end of the mix and mastering it'll get more distortion anyway.
For rythum tracks try recording the same thing twice then panning them hard left and right. Actually play them twice, don't just copy the track. This is common practice and I do it a lot as do a lot of people here. For a clean sound I use pretty much the same sound but turn the guitar down a bit. Im just starting to experiment with a bunch of 10w amps with 6 to 6.5 inch speakers (vox and marshall). I tried some of them and found they record really well.

Scott.
 
jimistone said:
I realize some peoples recording situation makes it hard to crank up an amp and mic it (nobody wants the cops to knock on their door)....but
I like a miced amp so much better than a direct sound....even a cheap ass amp, when miced properly, has more depth to the recorded guitart part than going direct.

thats just my experiance....I haven't tried ALL the direct guitar recording devices though
Click to expand...
I agree... but if you haven't tried a Parker Fly into a Mess Boogie Vee Twin preamp before your recorder yet, you should... you might be surprised.;)
 
yeah....

ha... well i realized that was really a newbie question and knew what responses i would get.... but i figured i might try it anyway... I never have a problem with guitar tracks except my own for my band. I never can get it quite how "I" want it. Its always too much disortion, or the wrong eq. Clean i can do no problem because i have a standard way of doing it. But this last track my dis. sounds were just kinda lacking. I used an old guild electric which sounds very good and just looks cool at hell! That into an old reverb unit i got for free from some guy down the street. its an old fender. I almost killed myself a while back with it when i realized the cap of the fuse wasn't on... so not realizing that the switch was on i pushed in the fuse once( i have no idea why..) and i got one fuck of a shock! haha.... Anyway that into a peavey classic 50 which i don't mind the sound of. Its a 2-12 combo. Then i miked it with a 57 into the pre-amp on my hoontech interface... I also messed around with miking another bass cab with a d112 just for shits. I blened the tracks and liked it better with a bit of the d112 as opposed to flat out 57. But in the mix it just doesn't fit. I'm sure its my eq setting... I just need to fuck around with it more. So thanks for posting on my dumb question...
 
One last thing, don't forget to get the dog out of bark range, nothing stuffs up a good track better than the dog going apeshit at some poor bugger walking down the street.
 
nascentjunkie said:
ok bascially i want to know how all of you on here record your electric guitar tracks. For both clean and disorted that is... I have been having a bit of trouble and i want to see what others are doing and work off of that. So please discuss all the things in the signal path you use and what you do in the mix.. i know that is a ton of crap usually... but hey, what else are you all gonna do?? I mean your on here!! haha.... ~Andrew
Click to expand...

i got a jcm900 half stack, record that with a shure sm58 i think thats the one, (the round one) positioned exactly at the center of one of the 4 speakers, about 1.5 feet away. run it through a eurorack 16 track, straight onto my home PC with soundblaster pro! dont do any digital effects, except a bass freq cut when needed. to make it sound fuller, i overdub the track with another recording (not copy n paste. that sounds horrible).

thats my two cents on recording guitar. as for clean, just the same mic placement, just depends on what amp u got. if u got a 12 watt crate (my old one) u gona get a shitey sound. when u spend 1000 on a vintage stack with tubes, theres the beauty

rock on. btw if u wanna hear how my guitar recordings sound, check out my site, theres some music of my band on it. http://www.rattleheadmusic.com
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
A good guitar, through a good-sounding amp, played by a good player in a good-sounding room.... captured by a well-placed/well-chosen mic attached to a good mic pre going into a good A/D converter.

Easy!
Click to expand...

i agree with this, except for the good-sounding room part. just stick an sm57 right in the dead center of one of the speakers and crank the amp up. no room worries.
 
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