The New Tone Thread

  • Thread starter Thread starter Telegram Sam
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Sounds pretty good to me. Are you trying to mimic the original tone? I have no input there as I don't know that song.
 
Greg_L said:
Sounds pretty good to me. Are you trying to mimic the original tone? I have no input there as I don't know that song.
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Hey dude, thanks. Well, I'm trying to get as close as I can without pulling my hair out, or spending a whole lot of time on. The original guitars are thick & wooly sounding. They also have some saturation that sounds like they were recorded pretty hot...




So you think these fake drums pass the Greg_L test??? LOL...

I mentioned the bass player & drummer in my previous post, as I'd never attempted anything from 'em except on guitar. The bass player (Geezer Butler) is a monster player, I didn't even come close to playing his bass line the way it is on the album, it'd take me a year to learn that...He plays the bass like a lead guitar IMO...I know I could do better with more practice, but again, the guy's playing is killer...
 
It's close Minerman but also not as thick. I did some digging around to find out what his rig & recording tricks are...According to Iommi he used.."...basically the SG and the Laneys. Basically, I set the presence, middle and treble on 10 with no bass whatsoever. The guitar volume was usually set on full and the three-way toggle switch was set on the up position for chording and in the treble spot for soloing.
For treble boost, I used a Rangemaster unit that had been reworked by my roadies. I used a wah-wah, a Rotosound box, and various boosters and phasers. For some of the solos, I used a Fender amp. With the Laneys I used to overload the inputs to give it more boost. That’s how I got those sounds. We’ve always tuned a semi-tone down, but on the Paranoid and Black Sabbath albums we tuned to pitch." Iommi often created double- tracking effects in the studio using tape delay, but this solo was triple-tracked, sometimes in unison and sometimes not...Perhaps the most important factor in Iommi’s massive sound is his use of two-note diads in the form of root+5 power chords, and his insistence on playing them on the bottom two strings whenever possible for maximum girth...
 
Miner, that's great. As Ray said, its not quite there on the tone but it still sounds really good - the original sounds thicker and darker - you've still got nice tone though. What simmed amp was that?

How did you do those drums? they sound really good.
 
rayc said:
It's close Minerman but also not as thick. I did some digging around to find out what his rig & recording tricks are...According to Iommi he used.."...basically the SG and the Laneys. Basically, I set the presence, middle and treble on 10 with no bass whatsoever. The guitar volume was usually set on full and the three-way toggle switch was set on the up position for chording and in the treble spot for soloing.
For treble boost, I used a Rangemaster unit that had been reworked by my roadies. I used a wah-wah, a Rotosound box, and various boosters and phasers. For some of the solos, I used a Fender amp. With the Laneys I used to overload the inputs to give it more boost. That’s how I got those sounds. We’ve always tuned a semi-tone down, but on the Paranoid and Black Sabbath albums we tuned to pitch." Iommi often created double- tracking effects in the studio using tape delay, but this solo was triple-tracked, sometimes in unison and sometimes not...Perhaps the most important factor in Iommi’s massive sound is his use of two-note diads in the form of root+5 power chords, and his insistence on playing them on the bottom two strings whenever possible for maximum girth...
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Thanks Ray, I actually just read the same thing myself. I knew he used an SG & Laney amps, but wasn't sure about the Treblebooster/Rangemaster...

When I first read that, I found it very odd that he dimed the treble/presence, & turned the bass completely down, but, he was using a real amp too, & I'm quite sure he had lots of volume coming from it too though, so it makes sense to me after I think about it...

I'm gonna try to record some of those rhythm parts with the neck p'up in my LP, that might fatten it up a little more, & I've got a couple more ideas to try too...

Thanks again Ray...


JDOD said:
Miner, that's great. As Ray said, its not quite there on the tone but it still sounds really good - the original sounds thicker and darker - you've still got nice tone though. What simmed amp was that?

How did you do those drums? they sound really good.
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Thanks JDOD, that's AT4 dude. It's basically all I've been using lately. I can't crank my amp very often, so I'm using the shit outta some ampsims...hahaha

I actually have the Rock Band multi-track things (they're OGG files, most of 'em have kick, snare, oh, guitars, etc) that I used to do a tempo track (in Reaper), bar by bar, for the whole song. When I got the tempo track done, I used ReaGate (which is a poor man's Trigger or Drumagog) to record the midi notes each track spit out (IE: I had 3 tracks: kick, snare, & toms/oh). Then it was just a matter of going through the midi notes & adjusting the velocity for the kick/snare. For the tom/oh midi track it was a lot more work because I had to go through & change the midi to the correct notes. After I got the midi lined out, I just ran it through Superior Drummer, with a Steven Slate kick/snare blended in...

It sounds complicated but it's really not man, you just have to dig into it & figure out how to do this stuff. I actually mixed an EP for a band about 3 years ago that I used the same trick on, & it turned out pretty decent. Those guys' drums sounded 100% better after I got done with 'em, IMO...

Do you use Reaper dude????
 
Miner, are you up really early or suffering from insomnia?

Yeah, I use Reaper. Its great.
 
JDOD said:
Miner, are you up really early or suffering from insomnia?
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I'm actually up really late & suffering from insomnia dude....I stay up 'til daylight some nights man, it's just how I'm wired. And working for probably 15 years on 2nd shift didn't help either...


JDOD said:
Yeah, I use Reaper. Its great.
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I thought you did, but wasn't 100%...I like it a lot myself. I've got a couple versions of Cubase (LE4 & LE5, they came with some gear I bought), & just for kicks, I installed LE5 & tried to set it up...I almost pulled my hair out, compared to Reaper, it's complicated as fuck. Just the most simple things (I used Cubase LE4 for quite a while) I had to keep going back to the manual. In Reaper, it's just like second nature for me...
 
Yeah, Reaper is great.

To be honest though, all I really need to do is set a tempo and press the red button - complicated production isn't really my bag!
 
the sabbath sounds good miner ..... to me the only real nit I'd pick would be that the guitars ( on my speakers anyway) need to come up in the mix.
When you listen to the actual sabbath track you notice the gits are way forward in the mix ..... yours almost seem buried to me.

Again ..... this is on MY speakers.

Otherwise it sounds great.
 
JDOD said:
Yeah, Reaper is great.

To be honest though, all I really need to do is set a tempo and press the red button - complicated production isn't really my bag!
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Yeah dude, I get that. I'd been wanting to learn how to do a tempo map like that for a long time, & honestly, I've got all day/night now, so...These cover tunes I'm working on will be the only projects of mine that have that in 'em....




Lt. Bob said:
the sabbath sounds good miner ..... to me the only real nit I'd pick would be that the guitars ( on my speakers anyway) need to come up in the mix.
When you listen to the actual sabbath track you notice the gits are way forward in the mix ..... yours almost seem buried to me.

Again ..... this is on MY speakers.

Otherwise it sounds great.
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Thanks Bob, this is just a quick mix to get feedback on the toans really man. I'll definitely bring the guitars up when I do the final mix dude...thanks again....
 
Really get stuck into your tunes miner, they'll get you through this shit.
 
OK, here's a tone. Still has that bit of harshness to it, but its not overly dark now.

This is with a slight US bias on the ISF.
Bass 10 O'Clock
Mid 10 O'Clock
Treb 2 O'Clock
Preamp Vol 3 O'Clock
Gain 9 O'Clock
Master 12 O'Clock

This has the OCD level on full and gain on zero.



I actually think I have the mic gain up a little high considering how loud the amp was and with such a large boost from the OCD probably a touch too much gain.

View attachment OCD.mp3
 
I think the tone sounds pretty good, but it sounds kind of distant. Sounds like you miked it from like 2 feet away.
 
More like 2cm away! Maybe it's got a little too much reverb on it, although there's not much.

I think the OCD is a little much, think it'll be better with a slightly less extreme boost.
 
It's still not quite the tone I'm hearing, but getting closer. I just dont have the time to work on it today.
 
It's a square room with a hard floor.. but then the mic is only 2cm off the grill.

Just listened to it again at my desk with ear buds on, I think it has a little too much fur on it which is easy enough to dial out with the gain knob... but I see what you mean about it sounding like it was distant miced and I don't understand it.

Possibly down to the HP/LP switch on the OCD taking out too much of the bottom end.
 
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I can't get along with the OCD. I've tried it, a good friend of mine has one and he let me borrow it, and it does nothing for me. The way I hear it...it's great in front of a totally clean channel to be your dirt sound, but in front of an already cranking amp it adds nothing but mush.
 
Greg_L said:
I can't get along with the OCD. I've tried it, a good friend of mine has one and he let me borrow it, and it does nothing for me. The way I hear it...it's great in front of a totally clean channel to be your dirt sound, but in front of an already cranking amp it adds nothing but mush.
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Yeah, up to now I've been using it almost like a 3rd amp channel. I decided to give it a go as a clean boost and it seems to work; sounds good, tightens everything up, but then it all seems to have added this distant effect. I will do some more experiments with it over Christmas too.

I'll see how I get on with an SD1 in the Christmas break.

I want to crack on now though, I have a lot of guitar parts to re-track. I want to get the guitar parts to a point that I'm completely happy with them before I hand the tracks over to the drummer.
 
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