Clarity problem recording overdrive

[HealingTears]

Hi guys,

My name is Maik (nice to meet you), I’m a guitarist, and I have a problem.

Some time ago I recorded some stuff with this equipment:
-Fender Strat. Mex.;
-Behringer V-amp Pro;
-Phonic Helix Board 18 Firewire mixer;
-PC (Cubase SX 3)

Back then I liked the sound enough to move forward with.
However, recently we (my band and I) replaced the Phonic mixer with a Tascam 1884 Firewire.
Also, we added a pre-amp to avoid having to use the standard pre-amp on the Tascam.
Summarizing, the setup is now:

-Fender Strat Mex.;
-Behringer V-amp Pro;
-'Really Nice Preamp' - Pre-amp;
-Tascam 1884 FW;
-PC (Cubase SX 3)

The setup got better, you’d think.
But even though the settings on my guitar and the V-Amp are exactly the same, the clarity of the recordings got worse…
With the original recordings, the hard overdrive was clear enough to hear the strokes (forgive me for my poor English, hope you understand what I mean by that), yet with the new setup, for some reason the sound is less clear and more blurry…

I’ve tried everything within my knowledge to get rid of this problem, but I can’t seem to get it right.
‘everything’, except for mixing, because I really want to get a good core-sound and correct as little as possible in the mix.

I tried recording without using the Really Nice preamp, but that doesn't seem to make a big difference.
Of course the logical thing to say would be:
"you replaced the phonic with the tascam and now your sound is worse... the tascam is the problem".
But I'm having a hard time believing that, especially because the drums and the vocals got way better after the purchase of the Tascam...

Does anyone have any idea what might cause this?

I’d really appreciate to hear your opinions on this.
Thanks very much for your help!

Cheers,

Maik.

 

[Roguetitan]

My guess is you have your gain set too hot causing clipping
but that is just a guess
you want to keep your levels in the green and just hitting the yellow on the loudest notes

 

[Jouni]

Dunno about Behringer V-amp... does it have a battery??.. is it checked?? Strings gone old in guitar?? All cords allright between them??

Change back to Phonic-->if it's better the culprit is the Tascam, If not the problem is elsewhere. Simple, my dear Watson.

 

[Roguetitan]

the Phonic is the better of the two IMO anyway.

 

[dgatwood]

However, recently we (my band and I) replaced the Phonic mixer with a Tascam 1884 Firewire.
Also, we added a pre-amp to avoid having to use the standard pre-amp on the Tascam.
Summarizing, the setup is now:

-Fender Strat Mex.;
-Behringer V-amp Pro;
-'Really Nice Preamp' - Pre-amp;
-Tascam 1884 FW;
-PC (Cubase SX 3)

The setup got better, you’d think.
But even though the settings on my guitar and the V-Amp are exactly the same, the clarity of the recordings got worse…

Wait... you're feeding the V-amp Pro into a preamp? Don't do that. The V-Amp pro contains a built-in preamp. Its output is line level. You don't need to amplify it again. You need to run it into a line level input.

You might try using S/PDIF from the V-Amp Pro to the FW-1884. By going direct via S/PDIF, you avoid lots of unnecessary amplification and processing that do nothing but muddy up the signal. (Well, I think maybe the speaker simulation is after the S/PDIF hardware, so you might lose that aspect of the V-Amp. Not certain, though.) Set the FW-1884 to slave its clock off the S/PDIF input.

If that still sounds fuzzy, try setting the FW-1884 to be the master clock and hook its word clock output to the V-Amp Pro's word clock output of the FW-1884 to the word clock input on the V-Amp Pro.

If you don't have any S/PDIF cables... well, I don't know where in the world you are, but at least around here, it's pretty easy to assemble them from commonly available cables and adapters. S/PDIF cables are 75 ohm coaxial cables with RCA plugs, so you can either get a high quality video cable (it should feel about like the coax you use to hook your TV set up to cable TV) or you can get a piece of coaxial cable TV cable with a standard F connector and then use an adapter like this one. You can get them at just about any electronics store, at least here in the U.S.

For the word clock, it's 75 ohm coaxial cable with BNC connectors. Those are pretty hard to come by, but again, you can make them pretty easily by taking a standard cable TV coaxial cable and adding adapters like this one.

If you have a Radio Shack or similar nearby, you should be able to find either adapter.

 

[Roguetitan]

^^^^

^^^^Good Post

 

[nevome]

I've also got a V-amp pro and have had nothing but clarity problems trying to record it right out of the box. Try this... ditch the speaker sim, set it for -- and run the signal out to a power amp/cab of your choice and mic a speaker. I'd be willing to bet your clarity problems will disappear.

The V-amp's direct out is cool for getting ideas down at 3AM, but I really wouldn't use it for a final project. Every sound has its place artistically in a mix somewhere/sometime, but the V-amps outputs, and I've tried all of them, have consistently been a big muck puddle for me. At times all I've done is re-record guitar tracks with a 57 in front of a Blues Deluxe, and suddenly the guitar parts would breath and dynamics and clarity were restored.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I've also got a V-amp pro and have had nothing but clarity problems trying to record it right out of the box. Try this... ditch the speaker sim, set it for -- and run the signal out to a power amp/cab of your choice and mic a speaker. I'd be willing to bet your clarity problems will disappear.

The V-amp's direct out is cool for getting ideas down at 3AM, but I really wouldn't use it for a final project. Every sound has its place artistically in a mix somewhere/sometime, but the V-amps outputs, and I've tried all of them, have consistently been a big muck puddle for me. At times all I've done is re-record guitar tracks with a 57 in front of a Blues Deluxe, and suddenly the guitar parts would breath and dynamics and clarity were restored.

The other thing worth trying is using different cab models - I used to demo with a Johnson J-Station. It actually sounded rather nice, particularly the Mesa models, but it turned into a giant pile of sludge when I tried to record with it. The problem was it was WAY too bass heavy, so one track alone was ok but if you started adding bass tracks or drum tracks or, god forbid, more guitar tracks, your mix would be lost in a sea of low end.

I ended up swapping all of the 4x12 cab models for 1x12's, which had a WAY tighter bass response. Problem solved. Only thing was, you couldn't do this for any amp that was actually modeled for a 1x12, because again it'd be over bassy to compensate.

Some heavy post-tracking EQ to roll off a lot of the low end would probably help too, but for me this was a better plug-and-play solution.