Really lost on home recording distortion...tried almost everything

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Ponte

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Wanted to start off by saying that this forum is great. Has a lot of great usefull info. The problem is, I have a pretty complicated (or simple) problem that I really can't find a search result to, so bear with me.

I currently own Guitar Rig 3 with the Kontrol Rig 3 pedalboard interface, Amplitube 2, and Cubase 4 Studio, all on a custom built high speed desktop PC (its meant for gaming).

My guitar I'm trying to record with is an ESP SC-607B (The 7 string Baritone that Stephen Carpenter from the Deftones uses), which is fitted with EMG 81 pickups. I have a Line 6 HD100 tube amp on top of a Marshall 4x12 Cab, and a few boss effects pedals. I also own a Shure 58 Beta mic and a Boss BR-600 recorder.

I originally used Guitar Rig...clean sounds great, distortions sound like shit. I then bought Amplitube, and all I get are the same shitty distortion sounds, except they're a little louder. And trust me, I'm loading them with impulses via Cubase. I've tried taking my Shure 58 Beta and micing my cabinet and I still get distant sounding tones that are actually a minor step up from the expensive amp sims I've purchased.

Here's the deal. I'm trying to replicate that same loud, crisp and punchy "nu-metal" guitar sound. The ideal tone I'm going for is that of my favorite band, the Deftones. Its actually a pretty commercial sound, and anyone not familiar with the type of distortion I want, here's a helping link:


Song: Be Quiet and Drive (you can really hear it at 2:57, and yes, only a 6 string played song but it has that tone): https://youtube.com/watch?v=1h25SoCgyNc

or for this 7 string song "Bloody Cape": https://youtube.com/watch?v=uvhOQKyuNws&feature=related

So tell me, what's my best method for recording distortion like that. Amp sims or cab micing? Also, is Kontrol Rig 3 just as good as the M-Audio Firewire and Presonus interfaces? Or do I need to scrap it?

Any detailed help would be highly appreciated. I'm just getting so fed up with doing the research, going out and getting the product, only to come up with less than mediocre bullshit. It kinda sucks all the motivation out to record lengthy material when you can't even come up with a decent tone. Plus, being Active Duty Army doesnt leave me a whole lot of time to mess around with different methods since I'm not getting home till about 6:30 pm. I'm sick of wasting money and going nowhere. Like I said, any help would be great.

- PFC. Ponte
Ft. Myer, VA
 
Do you own an A/B/Y box?

What I would do is mic the amp. For that tone, you want to aim the mic toward the center of the speaker cone, but not right on the center. The closer to the center, the more treble you will get in the tone, toward the edge gives you more bass in the tone.

Boost the mids on the amp head's eq, and lower the bass. Turn down the gain a bit (between 60-70% of what you would use live), and turn up the master volume to achieve unity on the meters before you hit record.

Listen to your amp through the mic on headphones so you can tweak and adjust as you go.

Put reverb on a side chain that doesn't get recorded to the track, and adjust it so that you emulate the reverb you will want later on. Reverb tends to color the tone of your guitar tracks (most often it brightens it up), so a lot of what you are hearing is the result of how the engineer has added reverb to the final mix. It is very important that you remember the settings you used when you finally find that sweet spot.

At the same time, run through Guitar Rig and go through the same process of trying to match the tone on the amp. Again, listen to the rig on headphones so that you are receiving the same type of input as you did with the amp.

Record your guitar on two separate tracks. This will give you a lot of options later on. For one, it will fatten up your guitars and make your mix fuller. Two, you can also decide one sounds better than the other. Be advised however, that most people, myself included, prefer the mic'd amp over a DI guitar track. DI guitar tends to be really in your face and hard to get to sit in the mix for the average hobby home recorder. There are some really good DI tones that you can get, but it takes a lot of tweaking before you ever hit the record button to achieve.

Good luck with it. I am retired Navy, so I share your pain with not having enough time to do anything. Thank you for you service, and above all, have fun with this. Hobbies are for enjoyment, right?
 
Hey dude...

Simple question to start off... and don't take it the wrong way...

Are you able to get a similar guitar sound coming off your amp? I mean just you and your guitar ripping in the room. Is it there?

That's step one. There are a couple of recording distorted guitar threads going around. I think most will agree that tone problems start in the room with you and your guitar.
 
One more trick on mic'ing the amp:

Try if you have the mics, to place one close to, but not touching the speaker grill, and another a couple feet away and mix the two tracks together.

One caveat on this technique, it really requires a properly treated room to pull it off effectively. If you are just in your barracks or an apartment, close-mic is probably the better route. Again, experiment with the distance from the speaker as well as where you place it on the speaker.
 
Welcome, Private! And thanks for you service to our country--I mean that!

I can't speak to your amp sims, because I haven't used them. I've gone direct with a POD, and recorded succesfully with an amp and a mic.

I much prefer the amp & mic combo, because a speaker moving air will always have more guts & energy than even a good modeler. But here are some tips that actually apply to both the amp & modelled approach.

1) Use less gain than you think you need. When I'm jamming in my room, I have the gain dialed all the way up--because in the room the gain has the time and space to reflect off walls and "smooth itself out." But if you put your ear right up against the speaker with the gain all the way, all you hear is sizzle--that's what the mic pics up. So when I record, I dial the gain back to half way, often even less.

Too much gain = sizzle = a small guitar. The big sound comes from volume, or in a recording--perceived volume. The perceived volume comes from less gain, with a thick sound and multiple tracks. Thus, number 2:

2) The "big" sound also comes from multiple tracks. You can't just record it once and duplicate the track. Even if you tweak the second one, it'll sound like a chorused or delayed single track--still kinda small. Play & record it once, and pan that one hard left for now. Then play and record it again and pan that one hard right.

That's just a starting point, but you'll hear the potential. Later you'll wanna try three (with one left in the middle but down a bit) or 4 with 'em panned across the stereo field.

Also try varying the part ever so slightly on one of the passes--different chord inversions, maybe an extra click or chunk that you didn't do on the other one.

3) Your eq for a recording is again, very likely to be different than your "jamming sound." My amp's got a contour control--and when I'm jamming by myself in the studio, I like to scoop the snot out of it and get this big chest thumping sound.

Problem is, that doesn't record and/or mix so well. Let the kick and bass guitar create the big bottom and let the guitar occupy it's own space--more in the middle. (Rule of thumb: a track that sounds great in the mix often sounds like crap--or at at least not so good--by itself. And a track that sounds good by itself often gets lost or trampled on in the context of a mix.)

And as far as the mic'd approach goes, I'm not familiar with your mic to know if its good for guitar cabs, but where are you putting it? I start right up on the grill cloth in between the center and the edge of the speaker. From there moving even an inch in any direction greatly changes it. You have to play around.

But even then, one track by itself usually sounds thinner than I want. I don't even judge a mic's position until I test it with a double track.

There are lots more tiny tweaks to these methods--but this is a lot of the basics. Try some of these--or let us know if you already are, and we'll keep trying to help.
 
starbuck26 said:
Hey dude...

Simple question to start off... and don't take it the wrong way...

Are you able to get a similar guitar sound coming off your amp? I mean just you and your guitar ripping in the room. Is it there?

That's step one. There are a couple of recording distorted guitar threads going around. I think most will agree that tone problems start in the room with you and your guitar.
Click to expand...


great advice. loud amps can sound deceivingly "good". You ain't gonna sound exactly like the deftones without a considerable $$ investment in gear.

the question is: why do you want to sound exactly like somebody else?
 
Hi_Flyer said:
great advice. loud amps can sound deceivingly "good". You ain't gonna sound exactly like the deftones without a considerable $$ investment in gear.

the question is: why do you want to sound exactly like somebody else?
Click to expand...
I think what he's looking for is that same genre's guitar sound, which he picked Deftones because they are recognizable.


And his original intention was that he hasn't been able to comp that sound with his current gear and was looking for advice on how to set up his stuff to get that sound. That was the intention of my first post. It was not intended to be a primer on how to record an amp...
 
Hi_Flyer said:
great advice. loud amps can sound deceivingly "good". You ain't gonna sound exactly like the deftones without a considerable $$ investment in gear.
Click to expand...

well, if you're not getting the sound coming out of your amp, where else you gonna get it?
 
If you are still interested in amp sims, amplitube has a metal version now that you can try free for 10 days or something like that. That might help you see if that suits your needs. Beyond that, I think the others have covered it very nicely.
 
get an ADA MP-1 preamp, a marshall power amp, and a 1960 cab

if you don't sound like stef after that, you never will
 
WhiteStrat said:
Welcome, Private! And thanks for you service to our country--I mean that!

I can't speak to your amp sims, because I haven't used them. I've gone direct with a POD, and recorded succesfully with an amp and a mic.

I much prefer the amp & mic combo, because a speaker moving air will always have more guts & energy than even a good modeler. But here are some tips that actually apply to both the amp & modelled approach.

1) Use less gain than you think you need. When I'm jamming in my room, I have the gain dialed all the way up--because in the room the gain has the time and space to reflect off walls and "smooth itself out." But if you put your ear right up against the speaker with the gain all the way, all you hear is sizzle--that's what the mic pics up. So when I record, I dial the gain back to half way, often even less.

Too much gain = sizzle = a small guitar. The big sound comes from volume, or in a recording--perceived volume. The perceived volume comes from less gain, with a thick sound and multiple tracks. Thus, number 2:

2) The "big" sound also comes from multiple tracks. You can't just record it once and duplicate the track. Even if you tweak the second one, it'll sound like a chorused or delayed single track--still kinda small. Play & record it once, and pan that one hard left for now. Then play and record it again and pan that one hard right.

That's just a starting point, but you'll hear the potential. Later you'll wanna try three (with one left in the middle but down a bit) or 4 with 'em panned across the stereo field.

Also try varying the part ever so slightly on one of the passes--different chord inversions, maybe an extra click or chunk that you didn't do on the other one.

3) Your eq for a recording is again, very likely to be different than your "jamming sound." My amp's got a contour control--and when I'm jamming by myself in the studio, I like to scoop the snot out of it and get this big chest thumping sound.

Problem is, that doesn't record and/or mix so well. Let the kick and bass guitar create the big bottom and let the guitar occupy it's own space--more in the middle. (Rule of thumb: a track that sounds great in the mix often sounds like crap--or at at least not so good--by itself. And a track that sounds good by itself often gets lost or trampled on in the context of a mix.)

And as far as the mic'd approach goes, I'm not familiar with your mic to know if its good for guitar cabs, but where are you putting it? I start right up on the grill cloth in between the center and the edge of the speaker. From there moving even an inch in any direction greatly changes it. You have to play around.

But even then, one track by itself usually sounds thinner than I want. I don't even judge a mic's position until I test it with a double track.

There are lots more tiny tweaks to these methods--but this is a lot of the basics. Try some of these--or let us know if you already are, and we'll keep trying to help.
Click to expand...

+1 on this advice. When I record with the settings I play with, my guitar sounds like a warbling pile of stupid.

I have to turn the reverb way down until the amp actually sounds flat and bland. Then when I record, it sounds decent again.

You said your clean tone sounds good, right? Add just the tiniest bit of distortion to that, and multi-track it 4000 times!
 
Wow, 11 responses in a day, thank you very much.

I've read a lot of great info, especially with mic placement.

One question that really hasn't been quite answered is if the Kontrol Rig 3 pedalboard that came with Guitar Rig is a good quality interface that will do the job just fine? Or does it pale in comparison to something like an M-Audio or Presonus firewire?

And to answer the question about my tone, I am very happy with the sound I'm gettin from my amp and cabinet. And as far as trying to sound like someone else, its really tryin to nail a genre that many artists and music producers try to acheive, I'm just using Deftones as a reference.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
+1 on this advice. When I record with the settings I play with, my guitar sounds like a warbling pile of stupid.
Click to expand...
And live it usually sounds like that with a band if you're not careful ..... I can't count the number of live players I've seen that use large amounts of distortion and , while it may sound good up on stage, out front there's zero definition to the notes. You can hardly tell what they're playing and it usually fails to cut thru the mix at all. And don't get me started on the 'scooped mids trend which, since most of the guitar sound is the mids .... it's basically the same thing as turning the git down.
I use 4 different distortions live and on all but one I have the gain on maybe 1, and the one that I turn more dirt up on, I still only have the gain around 10:00.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
+1 on this advice. When I record with the settings I play with, my guitar sounds like a warbling pile of stupid.
Click to expand...

You're quite sure it doesn't sound like a warbling pile of stupid live?

I think techniques like rolling back the gain, and adding more mids, and lowering the presence, and scaling back the reverb are techniques that most guitar players need to embrace, whether they're recording or playing live.

Most metal guitar players, IMHO, wind up practicing for hours on a small practice amp in their bedroom. They swipe their mids because they want that palm-mute chugga chugga that we all love. Yank this to stage volume and you got shit.

That being said, doing it 4000 times on different settings is the way to go. I assume the OP will settle for a System of a Down tone, and that is exactly what they do. I heard he uses no pedals, no effects at all. Just layers and layers and layers of slightly differing guitar sounds.
 
starbuck26 said:
You're quite sure it doesn't sound like a warbling pile of stupid live?

I think techniques like rolling back the gain, and adding more mids, and lowering the presence, and scaling back the reverb are techniques that most guitar players need to embrace, whether they're recording or playing live.

Most metal guitar players, IMHO, wind up practicing for hours on a small practice amp in their bedroom. They swipe their mids because they want that palm-mute chugga chugga that we all love. Yank this to stage volume and you got shit.

That being said, doing it 4000 times on different settings is the way to go. I assume the OP will settle for a System of a Down tone, and that is exactly what they do. I heard he uses no pedals, no effects at all. Just layers and layers and layers of slightly differing guitar sounds.
Click to expand...

I agree that what applies to recording for the most part holds true at stage volume. The original comment was comparing "bedroom jamming" and recording though. I think when a guitarist is just jamming in his room/studio, there's a tendency to crank the gain all the way, or scoop the mids--this creates a "rock star" sound in that vacuum. There are no other instruments to sit well with, no monitors creating stage noise, no FOH, etc.
 
WhiteStrat said:
I agree that what applies to recording for the most part holds true at stage volume. The original comment was comparing "bedroom jamming" and recording though. I think when a guitarist is just jamming in his room/studio, there's a tendency to crank the gain all the way, or scoop the mids--this creates a "rock star" sound in that vacuum. There are no other instruments to sit well with, no monitors creating stage noise, no FOH, etc.
Click to expand...

yes, exactly. well said.
 
Rokket said:
Or we could always go into the "his tone is all in his hands argument".... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

that's what i was sort of getting at...if he isn't close to stef's tone after buying his guitar, preamp, or power amp, then it's not gonna happen

and i can't guarantee that's what carpenter used on bloody cape, but he's used that setup in the past when, IMO, the deftones sounded a lot better than they do now
 
uh huh

that is a great point!

starbuck26 said:
Hey dude...

Simple question to start off... and don't take it the wrong way...

Are you able to get a similar guitar sound coming off your amp? I mean just you and your guitar ripping in the room. Is it there?

That's step one. There are a couple of recording distorted guitar threads going around. I think most will agree that tone problems start in the room with you and your guitar.
Click to expand...
 
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