distortion guitar sounds

[yakfarmer]

Heya,

I've been trying to record some songs using an MBox, pro tools and a Bosh distortion pedal (perhaps I've gone wrong already?!), but for some reason the sounds produced are unneccessarily gritty, and, well, it just sound pants.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. When using the pedal with my amp it sounds fine - crisp, and the tone is as full as I want it to be - but when plugged into the MBox it comes out awful. I've tried micing up the amp and then recording the mic signal, but I get the same problems.

Its very strange, because when recording clean guitar - that is to say undistorted and completely bare or with delays, or choruses or whatever applied - the MBox works fantastically (at least for my amaturish needs) and the samples sound great. Should I be using the inserts to apply the distortion instead of going straight through the line in? (I will have to buy a new cable for this, which is why I haven't tried this yet.)

As you can probably tell I dont know much about recording, save the rudiments, so if anybody could help me on this I would very grateful.

Thankyou!

 

[wishtheend]

Distortion as a direct effect really doesn't sound hot. Your best bet will be to run it to any small amp and then mic that. If that's not an option, look at the amp/cabinet modeler software.

 

[Markaholic]

Amplitube is your friend!
They also have a free one called Amplitube UNO

 

[jonnyc]

LOL yakfarmer I wish there was an easy solution to your problem. IMO recording a very good distorted guitar can be as difficult as recording very good vocals. First off if you're going direct in to your mbox its gonna sound like shit, direct in just sounds shitty no matter what you do to it even with amplitube you're guitars are going to sound kind of hollow and distant. You mentioned how good your cleans sound, well thats just pretty much normal most cleans sound really good, at least most I've heard. You're best bet is to get a good amp with good distortion and use that, also mic'ing up the amp and cranking it up about as loud as you can will get you a much fuller sound. The boss pedal could be the cause of your distortion not sounding good, I know a lot of people use boss pedals live, but I've never had good results in the studio, what you hear live and what you hear in a studio are two different things. Sorry for rambling on but one other tip I learned that sounds good is to dial in your distortion how you like it, then turn the distortion down about 20%. Hope some of this helps.

 

[reshp1]

You can't plug a distortion pedal directly into a line input and expect it to sound good. The pedal, like the guitar amp distortion all rely on the bandlimited response of the speakers to filter out higher order harmonics of the distortion. Otherwise it sounds very gritty and fizzy. You can try stacking a couple of low pass filters to get rid of everything above 5-6kHz, but it still won't sound like it would through the amp. Do you have anything to mic up the amp, that'll give you the best sound, probably better than an amp sim like Amplitube.

 

[yakfarmer]

Thanks guys (and or gals), you've cleared up a few things, and certainly set my mind at rest somewhat! I'll try your suggestions, and try and let you know how I get on. )

Thanks again! Take care.