Direct Guitar Recording

  • Thread starter Thread starter tonyA
  • Start date Start date

DO YOU RECORD DIRECT?

  • Never, that is lame. I mic everything - vocals, guitars, keyboard, drums

    Votes: 63 14.8%
  • Need to mic Drums, Vocals and Lead Guitar

    Votes: 81 19.0%
  • Except Vocals and Lead Guitar, I could plug everything direct

    Votes: 29 6.8%
  • Yes, with a little work I could get a good sound from it

    Votes: 254 59.5%

  • Total voters
    427
I don't know anything about instrument recording. Is direct recording pluggin your guitar to the TRS and directly to your PC soundcard, as suppose to putting a mic in front of a preamp speaker and recording that way?
 
every single session ive been in on used d.i's on the guitar and bass,and then the direct signal is blended with the mic'd signal,giving more punch to the recording.also a good idea even if ya dont use it (if the guitar or bass amp craps out ya still got the direct signal there (good idea to use d.i.'s live ,for that reason too). also if ya wanna put reverb on the guitar and it sounds muddy with the mic'd signal,putting it on the direct signal will be cleaner.
personally i prefer direct recording bass for sure (with a mic'd cab too),i'm a bassist myself and ya get a punchier and clearer sound on the bass that way.
 
I am a veteran of DI recording, I've been doing this since 96 and have went through all the trials and tribulations of DI.

And in all these years, I have really gotten a great sound by using NI Guitar Rig, setting it on a clean channel (AC box is what I use) and running my Boss MT-2 through it. I have really achieved a good sound I was looking for by doing this, Im not so big on some of the amp sim progs Distortion, although some are decent, most are kinda thin and weak, but using the clean amp sim and having my distortion pedal in the line added the right amount of kick.
 
I record both through mic and DI. Bass always goes through DI, sometimes with the addition of a miced signal. Guitar is more dependent on what sound I'm after. Whichever gives the result closest to what I wanted, I don't care the least how I get there.

However, I do think miced guitar cabs is easier to fit in the mix than emulated ones. They are more threedimensional.
 
hey what do you think of these recordings?
http://www.purevolume.com/super8

hmmm in my opinion guitars sound "weird", i cant tell if they di'ed the gtrs or its just a bad mic/amp/ampsettings... can you tell if they mic'ed or not??
 
I do kind-of a hybrid approach for acoustic guitar. I've been known to use a piezo mic stuck a few inches from the sound hole, coupled with a second mic high on the neck to pick up fret noise. So a semi-direct connection (not quite a pickup, but pretty close) and a traditional mic.

After I EQ the heck out of the piezo mic, I end up with a fairly clean reproduction of the tone of the instrument without a lot of room noise. Then, I mix in just enough fret noise to give it character.

I also like the sound I get when I then take that setup and throw software distortion onto the signal and treat it like an electric. It gives a subtly different tone than a real electric, which I kind of like. Maybe I'm just weird, hard to say.

Electric bass... direct... mainly for lack of an amp. :D
 
Somone should tell reamp you know, the guys that are that are SOOO cool and into the music industry that they have Deftones spelled wrong on their site.
 
I am a firm believer in "the more, the merrier" approach to recording. In this day and age when tracks (virtual or otherwise) are seemingly limitless, I tend to record as many sources as possible for an instrument.

A good drum mix will often have 8-15 different tracks. Why should something like guitar be any different? Now, I don't use 15 tracks for a guitar (lol!), but I have used as many as 6 or 7.

For example, on an acoustic electric guitar, I will record a direct channel, and anywhere from 3-4 different mics on the guitar itself (soundhole, frets, neck, etc), and 1 or 2 mics on the amp/cabinet.

I find that I can really capture the full range of frequencies like this. The downside, of course, is that you can end up with "too much". But at least I can capture it all at once, then figure out how to mix/match it later as needed.

Cheers.
 
Well, almost, Dracon. DI, or direct insertion, usually involves running an instrument with a pickup (could be guitar, piano, sax, bass, almost anything) into a box that changes the high impedence of the pickup (high-z) to line level, so you *can* plug it into the line in on a soundcard, recorder, etc. Some preamps, mixers, soundcards, etc. have high-z inputs already, which basically means they have an onboard DI box. Like amps, DI boxes come in different levels of quality, and do different things to the sound of any given instrument. There are both active and passive versions, powered and unpowered.
In the last few years, amplifier modeling technology has started to use digital approximations of wave forms of real sound coming from real amps, and tries to copy the sound of the real amp, with varying success. A modeler, such as Line 6 POD or Behringer VAMP, are also DI boxes of a sort, as they take High-Z and put out line level, This technology is in early development. It used to suck invariably. Now it sucks somewhat, some of the time. I'm convinced someday it won't suck at all.
As far as DI, it's a standard for bass, where it just works pretty well. Often engineers will mike up a guitarist's or bassist's amp, but take an unprocessed line off to another track just for a backup. If you need a different sound later, you can reamp it as Littldog suggests. Gee, I wonder what that would sound like through that old Ampeg? Then you can mic up the amp in a good room at your leisure, or run it through a modeler or whatever.
What you hear makes you play a certain way. The guitarist gets to hear his sound through his amp. Very few players are good enough to rock while listening to a dry, unprocessed track in their headphones.-Richie
 
Richard Monroe said:
Often engineers will mike up a guitarist's or bassist's amp, but take an unprocessed line off to another track just for a backup

Can this unprocessed line off be run from an amps "line-out"?
I don't remember if that's "line-level"?

Coincidentally, a bass player friend of mine brought this up in an email only minutes ago...
 
cellardweller said:
Can this unprocessed line off be run from an amps "line-out"?
I don't remember if that's "line-level"?

Coincidentally, a bass player friend of mine brought this up in an email only minutes ago...


line out IS line level =)
 
Has anyone tried IK multimedias new Guitar Rig? How does it compare to Ampitube? I love doing both, keep your options open.
 
For lo-fi, direct is best

I have been recording for years on four track (Portastudio 414), and I have found that plugging guitars and bass in directly into the guitar input is the cleanest and fullest sound one can get. I really REALLY love the sound of the distortion on the guitar when the trim is turned all the way to max and the volume is turned down. It's definitely a different aesthetic, but it works, at least for what I do. I guess whether you plug in directly or mic everything really depends on the type of sound you are going for. When micing a distorted guitar, often you lose clarity of the notes, whereas direct, the notes are very distinct.
 
I do EVERYTHING direct.. Pod for guitars, line out on a bass amp, digital keyboard, and vdrums (or ezdrummer if I sux at drumming...) The only mic I use is a 58 for vox.
 
I just use guitarport from line 6. it gives you a bunch of tones, amps sims and cabinets, as well as stomp boxes.
 
I used to mic. Then I discovered Sansamps and the H&K Red Box. I may never mic again.
 
Direct kicks ass - I use a Rocktron Prophecy II direct to pc. It always sounds the same, no worries about moving an amp or mic slightly and losing continuity of tone, so I can drop in to repair a part a even a year after it was first recorded without having to spend hours trying to get the tone 70% right. As far as recording tube tones goes, you can still go direct and get amazing results. I also record through a Mesa Boogie Triaxis to Mesa Simul-Class 2:90 poweramp then through a Palmer PDI-01 speaker sim direct. It's a hell of a lot easier than mic'ing plus I can always allow for harmonics and feedback by also splitting the signal before the rig to an amp at low volume tweaked to give the right degree of feedback set up a couple of feet on front of me. This allows me to get a cranked tone sound with the tubes practically on fire at full volume via DI and still have that 'live' sound from the harmonic feedback. Of course, this works through the Prophesy too but for some reason I have never felt the need to add to the Rocktron tones as they are already as close to perfect (for what I want) as they are.
As far as bass goes I use the Sansamp Bass driver and a Line6 Toneport, it's probably the only way to record a nice bass tone with out shaking the foundations of my house and having the wife and kids run screaming from the house while the cops come to kick my studio door in!
 
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