DI'ng a guitar

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rochey
  • Start date Start date
Rochey

Rochey

New member
Okay, I've just read Bruce's big drum recording thread, and a really cool idea is mentioned there...

DI'ing the guitar.

Using a DI box to bring in the guitar signal to the PC before it goes to the FX and amp. To me - that would mean that the guitarist would get his sound during tracking, although it would give me the freedom to either copy his sound on mixdown (by outputting to the FX and Amp later) or changing the amp completely etc.

Have any of you done this already? What success have you had? Have some amps sounded differently becuase you fed a line out signal (from PC) to it?


Any thoughts?


Cheers

R
 
The practice is quite common and done regularly...!
 
What can DI do for me?

Obviously it’s more common with bass than it is with guitar. I’ve done it with guitar maybe a handful of times in the last 7+ years. It all depends on the sound you’re looking for. I’ve DI’d a guy that had so many effects and a great clean tone from his Telecaster. Because we were unsure of some effects he was using we decided to go direct and manipulate it with effects later. I mean this guy had so many effects it sounded like a keyboard rather than a guitar. The rest of the group had a bluesy earthy sound so some of his leads contrasted with the natural tones surrounding it. If the guitar sounds decent on its own, like a Tele or Strat, (I’ve had better DI success with Fenders), then try it out. Even though you’re splitting the signal and having both DI and amp, I find myself dumping the DI and going with the amp tone.

Again, it all depends on the end product; what you’re after. There are no rules.
 
I do the DI thing for both guitar and bass.

i use the sansamp bass DI for bass (of course) and the sans amp classic for guitar.

on 1 truly indecisive day i did the following:

guitar DI'd to the sansamp classic. classic output sent to track1, and split to amp in. a whirlwind director patched in to the amp out and sent to track 2, an sm57 close mic'd to the amp (fender de'ville) on track 3, and an AT4033 mic'd a couple of feet back from the amp on track 4.

that was the day that i figured out that it is way easier to use the whirlwind director out of the back of the amp, than it is to mic the amp, but i get more tonal control from recording with the mic.
 
I'm doing lots of DI here, both electric and acoustic. The electric goes to POD Pro, then to a Carver power amp, then to a Marshall cab, mic'd with an SM57 to a Joemeek twin Q to the board. But I also take a line off the unprocessed guitar out of the Pod which can be re-amp'd later, processed as an insert, or just scratched.
The real surprise has been using the Fishman Prefix Plus on my Taylor DI. This has an electret condenser mic and an under-saddle piezo pickup. With stereo output, I send the two signals to the 2 high-Z inputs of the Joemeek and compress it a little, no EQ.
I mix with mostly the mic, which sounds thin until you add a little bit of the pickup, and Holy cow!!, it sounds virtually the same as a mic'd guitar (which it is, in a way, there is a mic in there after all). The best part is it rejects vitrtually all transformer hum, fan noise, barking dogs, etc. Hell, I can even sing softly with virtually no bleed. This combo has saved me hours of setup and tracking time.-Richie
 
I always split the signal and get a DI track along with the mic'ed amp.

That way if I figure out after the fact the combination of amp tone / micing sucked ass, then I have a backup plan. :D

I've had use for it only one time, though, and I wound up using Amplitube (guitar modeller plugin). Found a tone on it that I thought was more fitting to the song.
 
High!

You should try to use a compressor before recording. This way you can get that slightly higher sustain that the miced amp gives by acoustically feeding back into your guitar (though usually as low as not to give you that feedback sound).

When DIing this way, you can even get quite nice amp sim sounds from my vs880EX (though it surely IS dated).

aXel
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top