Guitar Recording - Amp Miking or DI?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mish
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Ultimately having both will be good - getting the amp first is obviously the right thing to do for you.

I've been playing for around 25 years, and I've got a few amps that I love. I've also got a Tonelab SE and I use the "Guitar Amp Pro" plugin in Logic on the mac. For recording - I usually go DI and record a dry track and then apply the software modeler and see what I can do with it, and then maybe put that same signal through an amp later and mic it -- the advantages:

1) I can noiselessly play when I'm in the right frame of mind for it;
2) I can take a track and try it out with multiple modeler settings *or* multiple amps; and
3) I can check and see if the neighbors around and if they're not, I can crank my 50 watt JCM 800 half stack up to 6 using my most inspired previously recorded dry guitar track and record that (and you're right, folks, that is *loud*), even if I'm not in the right frame of mind to play well at that time.

the disadvantages:
1) I have to use a good quality *preamp* for the guitar!!! I thought all software modeling sucked until I realized my problem was that my raw sound suckedawful because I was running it straight into the 1/8 jack of the computer or through some other crappy preamp - this is not as much of a concern for the dedicated units like the Tonelab or Pod type things, I guess;
2) I'm never 100% sure I've got the signal attenuation and impedance matching right on the signal from my audio interface to the amp (although I've got a method that works - I output to the tonelab se effects return, and bypass all the tonelab effects and send that to the amp - there are other undoubtedly better approaches using dedicated reamping devices)
3) (the big one) - some guitar playing requires the feedback/sustain you get when the guitar can "hear" the amp -- for this one, I just have to either trust my studio "monitors" to do the job (sub-optimal) or set up the whole rig and record both the dry track and the amp track.

And let's face it - some of the models are good! And others are as close as I'm gonna get to some other type of amp, like a Vox AC30, for instance. I'm more likely to keep a modeled lead track than a rhythm track. I've got some lead tracks with the tonelab that I'm sure I couldn't improve with an amp.
 
antichef said:
Ultimately having both will be good - getting the amp first is obviously the right thing to do for you.


I've got a method that works - I output to the tonelab se effects return, and bypass all the tonelab effects and send that to the amp

And let's face it - some of the models are good! And others are as close as I'm gonna get to some other type of amp, like a Vox AC30, for instance. I'm more likely to keep a modeled lead track than a rhythm track. I've got some lead tracks with the tonelab that I'm sure I couldn't improve with an amp.
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I have a Tonelab SE, and I'm so glad you shared this! Thanks! Although I do have a Line 6 thingy that is made to get a dry sig recorded, I'm thinking I may like this on the way back to the amp....

As I've contemplated all of this, I realized that one very important thing to make a modeled amp sound decent is to make sure your early reflections on the reverb are set in a way that is believable. We never listen to a real amp with our ears right up to the speaker, so that means that the room is involved. To make the model sound right, it has to be setup in such a way that it sounds like we are hearing it in a room. Then again, so does a real amp, when close miced.

And yes, I agree with a lot who have said that modellers can sound very very bad.....Matter of fact, I hate it when I hear a modeled sound passed off as an amp... nothing screams "bedroom studio" like that, or a cheezey drum machine sound.... but, just use your ears, and a bit of creativity, and you can do well with a model....

Peace!

~Shawn
 
TimN said:
To suggest that modelers are good because you can do things fast is not a reason to use them.
Click to expand...

Actually, this is a very good reason to use them, especially if you put bread on the table recording high-school and college bands for $150 per song. For that money, who has time to set up all three of their guitar players amps and take 1-2 hours for each amp getting a great sound? I'll take the 85-90% that a moddeller gives me in ten minutes, thanks!

Peace!

~Shawn
 
Alright, so here's what happened.

I had Roland BR600 which had those COSM effects, and while pretty much all of them SUCK - the default Clean effect was so much part of my tone that after I had the recorder taken from me couple of weeks ago, I couldn't get my tone back on track. Now I have a gig on 18th, and I really had to do something.

So I went to my local guitar shop and asked if I could try a couple of pedals in combination with MT-2 and see if I could find anything that would match that 'clean' effect (which was more of an eq+chorus type of thing). I did like Boss CH-1 quite alot, but then I noticed V-Amp 2 for just about 10-15 pounds more expensive than this stop-box. I asked if I could give it a try, and for one thing the chorus effect on it was decent enough to match CH-1, so I thought I couldn't lose in any case. For that price (80 pounds - 160 bucks) I got V-Amp, power suply and a frigging foot switch, a carry-case and a Behringer sticker :D


Long story short, I did have to go thru a manual to get a grip on how to use it because of 1-button for-50 functions things. Once I did that - I was totally blown away by the sound I could get out of it. Mesa Boogie Mk2 + 2x12" V-amp combination does miracles for my regular tone, plus the effects do their part as well. Especially that I never use flange/phase/echo etc - abit of chorus and reverb is all I need.

I was also stunned how good it sounds thru headphones - rich deep distortion with no overdrive. Sounds fairly ok thru my marshall mg30, but I'll be using venue's 100w cabinet on the gig so it should sound alot better.

The guitar guy tried to sway me into buying Pod, but for the 4-times bigger price I don't believe it would sound 4-times better. If at all.

Very happy with a purchase.
 
I'd do whatever it takes to own a great sounding guitar amp before I moved forward with anything else. Then get yourself a "decent" but fairly inexpensive mic ($500 or so) and mic pre and upgrade them over the years whenever you can afford it. DI guitar tone is cool. But there's nothing like a good sounding recording of a good sounding tube amp. It's even better than sex when the mic placement is just right.
 
People who like amp modelers are usually the same ones who like auto-tune, hit-replacement (drumagog), and midi virtual synths.

Which is all perfectly fine ... if you can't sing in tune, hit a drum, or figure out how to record a guitar amp.

And of course, all of the above are perfectly capable of sounding pefectly fine ... if a natural and organic sound isn't necessarily what you're after. On the other hand, if you're more of a purist who wants to bring a sense of reality to what you're reproducing ... then it's going to be a stretch to think you can do it with fake voices, fake amps, fake instruments, etc. etc.
 
Daisy said:
People who like amp modelers are usually the same ones who like auto-tune, hit-replacement (drumagog), and midi virtual synths.

Which is all perfectly fine ... if you can't sing in tune, hit a drum, or figure out how to record a guitar amp.

And of course, all of the above are perfectly capable of sounding pefectly fine ... if a natural and organic sound isn't necessarily what you're after. On the other hand, if you're more of a purist who wants to bring a sense of reality to what you're reproducing ... then it's going to be a stretch to think you can do it with fake voices, fake amps, fake instruments, etc. etc.
Click to expand...

Awww c'mon Daisy.... tell us how you really feel.... :p
 
Daisy said:
People who like amp modelers are usually the same ones who like auto-tune, hit-replacement (drumagog), and midi virtual synths.

Which is all perfectly fine ... if you can't sing in tune, hit a drum, or figure out how to record a guitar amp.
Click to expand...

Being that this is home recording, I think the last part of your quote is the important one.

Give a noob the best amp, guitarist, all the mikes in the world and all the preamps in the universe. Give another noob a GOOD amp sim

Let's see which one sounds better.

Let's see which one needs 12:1 compression on the chugs, which causes the entire attack of the next notes to be worthless

While were at it, which * SOUNDS* more real? Drum hits replaced with well played drum hits, or drum hits smashed 24:1 with zero attack?
 
Daisy said:
And of course, all of the above are perfectly capable of sounding pefectly fine ... if a natural and organic sound isn't necessarily what you're after.
Click to expand...
What's so "natural" or "organic" about the sound of an electric guitar run through a half-dozen pedals into an electrical amplifier to power a series of transducers (loudspeakers), and then transduced again back to electricity by throwing another transducer (microphone) in front of the first ones, then running that signal through a dynamic range compressor and a series of frequency filters (EQ) before or after recording to a storage medium?

Rube Goldberg? Yes. Natural or organic? Not unless one believes in some form of theory of Creationism that includes a Marshall half-stack and a series of Boss stomp boxes growing out of the primordial ooze.

G.
 
"...theory of Creationism that includes a Marshall half-stack and a series of Boss stomp boxes growing out of the primordial ooze."
That'd be the "Intelligent design" creation theory!
 
rayc said:
"...theory of Creationism that includes a Marshall half-stack and a series of Boss stomp boxes growing out of the primordial ooze."
That'd be the "Intelligent design" creation theory!
Click to expand...

Only if the amp went to "11" :p
 
rayc said:
"...theory of Creationism that includes a Marshall half-stack and a series of Boss stomp boxes growing out of the primordial ooze."
That'd be the "Intelligent design" creation theory!
Click to expand...
Can we get a rimshot, please? Ha ha, good one, Ray :).

I was expecting someone to come back and say that was a true theory and that Les Paul was God.* In which case I was ready to remind them that God preferred his amplification extremely clean and his signal path extremely short.

eyema_believer said:
Me and you know what this means... but most of these whipper snappers 'round these parts will have to "google" that term!

~Shawn
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Which will send them to Wikipedia where they can proceed to get a series of inaccurate answers based upon majority opinion ;) :D.

G.

*Not to be confused with the "Clapton Is God" branch of religion, which is an entirely different set of beliefs altogether.
 
To me this is a silly argument.

Usually, a guitar player is not an engineer or producer. He sits in his cave spending hours upon hours working on his playing rig to get the tone he wants and sound he wants. It then becomes the engineers task of capturing that tone. If you go DI, all of this is lost and the mods come into play. If you are the guitar player and the engineer you can prob get some decent sounds of that but generally the guitar player is not the engineer, hence the problem.

IMO let the guitar player get his sound and then try your best to capture that. If you are the guitar player, engineer and producer, do what works for you.
 
TaintedDb said:
Usually, a guitar player is not an engineer or producer. He sits in his cave spending hours upon hours working on his playing rig to get the tone he wants and sound he wants.
Click to expand...
Which in itself is a wasteful pursuit on a couple of levels.

You're right about one thing, they are neither engineer or producer. This is why they usually just don't get that what works for them standing in their cave in front of their amplifier and loosing their hearing is as often as not not going to be the same thing that works for recording.

We see it over and over again on these boards: The tone-centric guitarist can't get the right sound on their recording because they are ODing the volume and distortion; or where they can't get the mix to play together because the "right tone" on the guitar is simply not leaving enough room for anything else regardless of what the engineer does; where the guitarst spens twelve hours at the desk with the guitar track on "Solo" getting the sound "just right" only to discover when he takes the "Solo" button off that it sounds like crap in the mix.

Second is what I perceive as a bit of an inverse law of guitarist concern: the more one cares about their playing skills, the less they worry about "tone"; that is, the more they realize that "tone" comes mostly from *how* they play their gear, not what gear they use or how they tune it. They understand that if you put a guitar and an amplifier out on a stage - it doesn't matter what type - and you welded every single control knob and switch in place so they could not be changed, and you had 5 different guitarists come up one at a time, that they would all have a different "tone". And they also recognize that the more they refine their tone by refining their playing skills instead of searching for the next magic amp or cab or knob setting, the better they'll sound on disk or tape regardless of how they turn the knobs. To put it in a Zen-like way: Stop worring about the "tone" and the tone will come on its own.

Third is the most stark fact; it's not up to the guitarst as to how they should or should not sound unless they are the producer. That may work on stage, but it doesn't work in the studio. We've all been through the BS of every band mamber trying to play producer and every one of them wanting to be the loudest person inthe mix and every one of them having a different and incompatible idea of just how the mix shoud play out. This is why - unless the entire band is acting as the producer - the engineers and producers usually want to keep the entire band out of the mix sessions, because they wind up going nowhere.

G.
 
to further your point, it doesn't even work on stage.

That awesome scooped mid tone just means the bass guitar and humans in the crowd eat all your lows and the cymbals eat all your highs ,leaving you with, jack diddly
 
Do'h, how could I forget the good ol' death scoop/smiley face/flying V EQ?

Yeah, that doesn't work well anywhere - studio, stage or cave - unless apparently if you are standing right in front of the amplifier as it's putting out 120dBSPL...or maybe listening in '77 to Humble Pie on the 8-track in your old '64 Chevy II that you retrofitted with a Craig 5-Band EQ/amp to drive your Jensen 6x9s, which you've already blown out because of that very EQ setting on that very sloppy amplifier.

;) :D

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
What's so "natural" or "organic" about the sound of an electric guitar run through a half-dozen pedals into an electrical amplifier to power a series of transducers (loudspeakers), and then transduced again back to electricity by throwing another transducer (microphone) in front of the first ones, then running that signal through a dynamic range compressor and a series of frequency filters (EQ) before or after recording to a storage medium?
Click to expand...

Yea, by it's nature, the way the sound of an electric guitar is produced is kind of an odd thing. Trying to model/simulate that kind of an oddity digitally ... is merely piling more silliness on top of oddness.

Pipeline ... you got an amp. You got a mic. If the whole concept of sticking the mic in front of the speaker on that amp ... is somehow too complex of a recording process, as someone throws their hands up in the air proclaiming "I give up!" ... then they've got some issues in life.
 
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Which in itself is a wasteful pursuit on a couple of levels.

You're right about one thing, they are neither engineer or producer. This is why they usually just don't get that what works for them standing in their cave in front of their amplifier and loosing their hearing is as often as not not going to be the same thing that works for recording.

We see it over and over again on these boards: The tone-centric guitarist can't get the right sound on their recording because they are ODing the volume and distortion; or where they can't get the mix to play together because the "right tone" on the guitar is simply not leaving enough room for anything else regardless of what the engineer does; where the guitarst spens twelve hours at the desk with the guitar track on "Solo" getting the sound "just right" only to discover when he takes the "Solo" button off that it sounds like crap in the mix.

Second is what I perceive as a bit of an inverse law of guitarist concern: the more one cares about their playing skills, the less they worry about "tone"; that is, the more they realize that "tone" comes mostly from *how* they play their gear, not what gear they use or how they tune it. They understand that if you put a guitar and an amplifier out on a stage - it doesn't matter what type - and you welded every single control knob and switch in place so they could not be changed, and you had 5 different guitarists come up one at a time, that they would all have a different "tone". And they also recognize that the more they refine their tone by refining their playing skills instead of searching for the next magic amp or cab or knob setting, the better they'll sound on disk or tape regardless of how they turn the knobs. To put it in a Zen-like way: Stop worring about the "tone" and the tone will come on its own.

Third is the most stark fact; it's not up to the guitarst as to how they should or should not sound unless they are the producer. That may work on stage, but it doesn't work in the studio. We've all been through the BS of every band mamber trying to play producer and every one of them wanting to be the loudest person inthe mix and every one of them having a different and incompatible idea of just how the mix shoud play out. This is why - unless the entire band is acting as the producer - the engineers and producers usually want to keep the entire band out of the mix sessions, because they wind up going nowhere.I]
I am by no means an ace guitar player. I have not spent the hours upon hours in my cave tweaking my sound. I have a few guitar years under my belt on acoustics. I have a new band now and the songs we are writting require me to backup on an electric. I did choose the classic les paul/Marshall combo and there is something about that "sound".

My point was that if your are producing your own stuff (mistake! lol) than I'm sure you can model some amps etc. But IMO, you should not be producing yourself and just worry about your own gear and leave the engineering and producing to those whos task it is to do those.

My lead guitar player is fantastic but when I am recording him, he MUST listen to me when I am at the recording controls. (yeah, I would prefer to have a pro but not all of us have tons of cash). He agrees to this but does not like it. "When you come out of the break and back to the Em, don't add that extra chucking, it sounds retarded" and he gets a little bitter rofl.


I am learning good stuff here. I am thankful for this forum.
 
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