direct in or miked?

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TheoryOfAngels

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hi everybody... we are recording our second demo and I am curious about the best method for recording the strings (guitars and bass). Our plan for recording is to use the direct outs on the amps leading to the mixer, which is patched into our computer, where we are using cakewalk to record/mix the whole mess. The idea is to allow us to play "live", but only catch the seemingly clean, uninterrupted signals from the guitars/bass, thus allowing me to go back at a later time and record the drums while listening to the previously recorded strings through headphones, which will not only eliminate bleed, but allow me to nail my parts to my liking. We attempted to set everything up this past sunday, and it was, needless to say, a disaster. Though each instrument had its own channel on the mixer, when recorded, it sounded like a 400 pound gorrilla being pushed down a flight of stairs with an 8-track strapped to its back. no matter how much we tweeked and adjusted and fussed over EQ, gain, volume, and pan, we just couldn't get the "Clean" sound we had expected from 3 seperate instruments on 3 seperate channels. should we jsut be miking our amps instead?

lol... BTW... We're new at this...
 
You know I was wondering where that damn gorilla had got to.

Usual practice is to get your drum track down first, maybe just playing along with a scratch track to keep your drummer on it.

You can DI the bass but mic the guitar amp for sure. If you're close micing you won't get much bleed from anything else
 
The line-outs of amps usually sound like crap and are very noisy. You'd be better of miking your amps or record direct through a preamp.
 
cool, thanks. one of our guys is using a line 6 flextone HD; which actually sounds pretty good through the direct out. Our other guy is using a Marshall JCM2000 50 watt, which has no direct out, so we were using his FX send instead. his sound is marginal at best. our main problem is the bass. Our bass man is using a Peavy T-max 500 (550?) watt head. both the line 6 and the T-max have XLR direct out capability. On the Marshall, we are going from the FX send into a D/I box, then to the mixer. I'll definately spend much time over the next few days tinkering around with different settings, playing with mics, etc. to try to get things straightened out. Thanks for the help.
 
Run the bass directly to the DI. If he wants to amp it take a signal off of the DI and run that to the amp.

Mic the marshall for all the tracks and save the line6 for rehearsals and gigs.
 
TexRoadkill said:
Run the bass directly to the DI. If he wants to amp it take a signal off of the DI and run that to the amp.

Mic the marshall for all the tracks and save the line6 for rehearsals and gigs.
Click to expand...

I'm not a fan of the Line6 for gigs. I don't have one myself, beinmg a bass player, but the couple of guitarists we've had who use them either have terrible tone or operational problems in mid-set.

But aside from that, I was under the impression that a Line6 was better suited for recording. Not true?
 
EddieRay said:
I'm not a fan of the Line6 for gigs. I don't have one myself, beinmg a bass player, but the couple of guitarists we've had who use them either have terrible tone or operational problems in mid-set.

But aside from that, I was under the impression that a Line6 was better suited for recording. Not true?
Click to expand...

I was being polite and not telling him to sell it and get a real amp, lol. I know some people like them but to each his own. I would think their versatility would be better for live use even though the tone still sucks.

In the studio you have more time to get the tone right and it's the tone you have to live with for the rest of your life on the recording. I would go with the Marshall but maybe that's just me.

I was in a band in the early 90's and the guitarist was REALLY into effects he could do all these cool sounds but the tone was just wimpy. He was using a GK amp and a Digitech GSP21. It was the shit for the time but so was the tone. I listened to the recordings recently and it was just as wimpy as I remembered.

Tone is everything. You can add delay, flange and reverb but you can't synthesize a truly good guitar tone. I'd use an old small tube amp over a modeller any day of the week.
 
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