Guitar Recording - Amp Miking or DI?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

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.

I think what the "debate" revolves around is just how literally one wishes to take the term "modeling".

Of COURSE a real amplifier is going to sound more like a real amplifier than any kind of modeler will. I think it would be silly for anybody to try and argue otherwise. Although it has repeatedly been shown in blind tests here and elsewhere that even experienced listeners can often be fooled by a well-tuned modeler; so while they may not be exact clones of amplifiers, they can easily be "close enough" to succeed in their job.

What I question is the automatic assumption that an amplifier is the standard by which everything else should be judged. Sure, modelers kind of bring it on themselves by calling themselves modelers and by actually putting amp names on the dials. But just because someone dials in "Mesa" on their $200 modeler and fails in side-by-side comparisons with the $3000 cab for which it's named doesn't have to mean that the sound is unlistenable or that it can't work really, really well for many productions. One may just as well say that a '68 Dodge Daytona was not a fast and fun car because it could never actually race with the Big Boys at Daytona.

The point about the "organic" and "natural" bias is that it is a bias with no basis in reality, because there's nothing natural or organic about a Mesa Boogie or a Marshall sound to begin with. There is no physical, phychological, genetic or evolutionary reason why "that sound" should sound "better" than a Crate or a modeler or a rubber band stretched between two dresser drawer knobs to the human ear. It is a purely arbitrary and artificial bias that has only really come up in the last 25 years or so of the centuries of music history. But because half the people on this board have only been listening to or making music for those 25 years or less, they think that is How Things Are Supposed To Be By The Way God Intended It.

It's a self-delusional and creativity-stifling way to look at it IMHO.

G.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

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.

OK, TaintedDb, I have to apologize because it sounds to me like we are in complete agreement, and that I 180° totally misundersood your original post. Ugh. Sorry.

Just imagine if you had the big bucks to hire George Martin or Rick Rubin or someone equally non-documentarian as your band's producer, and they told your guitarist example guy that, after spending all that time in the cave that the way he wanted to do song three on the album required a Rickenbacker/Vox sound more reminiscent of the Byrds than of Metallica... You could either let Mr. Bigshot walk out and take any chances of gold record sales with him, or you could let him get a session cat in for that one song to happily do what cave boy is going to sulk over, and probably do it much better. If Cave Boy is your friend, it's a tough call for sure. But it's one both of you guys should have thought of before you hired Mr. Martin-Rubin to wear the producer's cap.

That's an overly extreme and fantastically ficticous example, of course. But it does get the basic point across, I think.

G.

 

[TaintedDb]

Yeah, I'm here because I know I don't know everything and I like the discussion. Anyone who knows everything has nothing to learn.

The only rule I have learned recording so far is, there are very specific rules of thumb, which all get thrown out the window when the red light goes on. Tis why it's an art form that most people will never understand. I understand enough to know that I don't know shit.

 

[Daisy]

The point about the "organic" and "natural" bias is that it is a bias with no basis in reality, because there's nothing natural or organic about a Mesa Boogie or a Marshall sound to begin with. There is no physical, phychological, genetic or evolutionary reason why "that sound" should sound "better" than a Crate or a modeler or a rubber band stretched between two dresser drawer knobs to the human ear. It is a purely arbitrary and artificial bias that has only really come up in the last 25 years or so of the centuries of music history. But because half the people on this board have only been listening to or making music for those 25 years or less, they think that is How Things Are Supposed To Be By The Way God Intended It.

It's a self-delusional and creativity-stifling way to look at it IMHO.

Well then by that logic, what's natural about a collection of steel strings being struck by felt hammers ... immedately retracting in order to allow the strings to continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency ?

There's nothing evolutionary about it (you're not going to find their likeness in any ancient cro-magnon cave drawings), but still it's the sound we've come to know as a piano. And who's to say that it's going to sound any better than someone playing a kazoo or picking their nose?

Either way, if you stick a mic in front of a piano being played in a room ... there's something much more true to reality than the Left and Right direct line outputs of a Yamaha P90.

 

[gecko zzed]

Well then by that logic, what's natural about a collection of steel strings being struck by felt hammers ... immedately retracting in order to allow the strings to continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency ?

There's nothing evolutionary about it (you're not going to find their likeness in any ancient cro-magnon cave drawings), but still it's the sound we've come to know as a piano. And who's to say that it's going to sound any better than someone playing a kazoo or picking their nose?

Either way, if you stick a mic in front of a piano being played in a room ... there's something much more true to reality than the Left and Right direct line outputs of a Yamaha P90.

I'm not sure about this "true to reality" thing. I agree that there is nothing "natural" about a "collection of steel strings . . . etc" that we call a piano. It is a human artifact, with a mechanical operation, that produces a particular sound that we call "piano". We know that there isn't just one piano sound; there are as many as there are pianos in the world. Putting a mike in front of a piano should faithfully reproduce the sound of that particular piano, and to that extent, reflects the "reality" of that piano. Taking a line output from a Yamaha P90 equally reflects reality; the reality of that particular instrument. The fact that it purports to reproduce a piano sound is really irrelevant. The p90 is also a human artifact, with an electronic, instead of mechanical, operation. There is no inherent reason to declare one more "real" or more "natural" than the other; they have equal claims.

I recall the story of George Martin (or whoever) cutting up tape of calliope music and reassembling at random to produce the sonic landscape sitting behing "Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite" on Sergeant Pepper's. Here the focus was on the end result, and not on any pre-determined purity of sound. And I think that's an important part of the recordng process: doing what's necessary to achieve the sound you are seeking, and to that extent you will select a piano or a p90, mike a cab or DI a guitar depending on which gives you the result that reflects best the producer's intent.

 

[pipelineaudio]

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.

You are trivializing the difficulty in micing an amp. You are especially trivializing the difficulty of micing an amp in light of today's dynamic range expectations.

Long long ago, when we were aloud to use these things called "volume knobs" on our stereo systems, the wide range between palm mutes, chords and single notes from plain high strings was an acceptable thing, but even back then it was NOT such a trivial thing as you are making out.

I still contend a noob will get a better and even a more "real" sound from a GOOD amp sim than they will from micing an amp.

I'd be happy to hear evidence to the contrary

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Well then by that logic, what's natural about a collection of steel strings being struck by felt hammers ... immedately retracting in order to allow the strings to continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency ?

Absolutely nothing, which is why the number of successful variations on the theme, including electronic modelers, from a Steinway grand to a Fender/Rhodes 73 traveler, from a clavichord to a Clavinet, from a Baldwin honky tonk upright to a Yamaha electric are in the hundreds, and the number of quality cuts from platinum sellers to indie releases made with these various keyboard sounds ranges in the hundreds of millions.

You don't hear people ranting and raving that if it doesn't sound like a 6' Steinway, it just don't cut it (other than maybe a few extra-snobby and uninformed classical-only people.) Not to mention that that "Steinway grand sound" is a relatively recent invention that didn't even exist when Beethoven, Mozart, Stravinsky and that gang ruled the musical world. The "pianos" back then sounded quite different. The idea that Beethoven's 9th *should* be played on only the best grand pianos is just a bunch of baloney based upon a very recent bias.

if you stick a mic in front of a piano being played in a room ... there's something much more true to reality than the Left and Right direct line outputs of a Yamaha P90.

I have to respectfully disagree on this one...or at least disagree that it will be true anything more than 50% of the time. You'd be much more right right if one had complete control over the quality and personality of the piano and of the live room in which the piano were placed, and the gear available. But this is not always the case. And even when it is, that's often not enough. Hundreds are the stories - including a couple of instances I was involved with first-hand - where the engineer (a good pro engineer, not just a home rec'r) spent an hour or two working on getting the piano to sound right, only to make the decision to switch over to that Yamaha or Korg or Kurzweil electric because it actually sounded better in the mix and more like the perceived ideal of "the real thing" than the the real thing did.

I'm with pipeline times two regarding the "not just sticking a mic in it's face" thing. This is especially true when it comes to acoustic pianos; you don't just slap a piezo on the inner body or a stereo tree on the strings, or a mic in the live room at x.x feet and hit record. Every piano and every situation is different and you gotta figure what works best for that situation, otherwise the sound can be unforgivingly brutal.

Hell, unless I'm lucky enough to have a $50k mic locker and a couple of real honeydripper preamps at my disposal, nothing is definite for me; I'll take line in over the real thing quite often in any lesser situation.

G.

 

[rockgod100]

A little of both

I normally use the standard sm57/preamp combination, but I still like to use a little modeling (I still use the old izotope Trash plugin) for extra color or to add a little compression and stereo separation.

 

[Nightfire]

Get the marshall, and when it comes time to record, do both. Amp miking AND DI. Gives you more flexibility in the mixing stage. Then you have one track with the tone you want (amp miked), and one track that you can do some experimenting with. Blend them together, voila.

Mike

 

[reddavid]

I suppose it's a very broad question, but I'd be mega-glad to hear some first-hand experiences before I decide whether to invest into a chain of effects processors, or a better amp + a good dynamic microphone.

The thing is, as opposed to miking an amp, I'm very happy with my guitar tone recorded thru mixer. But, I have a crappy amp (Marshall MG30), and a *very* crappy chinese mike. The sound is bad as it is coming from that lowest-range solid-state, and it doesn't get better.

However I had used tube Marshall amp in studios and my guitar sounded brilliant. So I have a dilemma. On one hand, if I get a good amp say, Marshall JVM205 I could also use it for gigging in the future. On the other hand, for that money I could get v-amp pro, 31 band equalizer and a tube pre, which I could use for any other intrument/vocals, hell even some of it for mastering.


I'd probably go for the later anyway, but it would be great to hear some alternative opinions on this.

I know this is a bit late now, but me, I'd do the latter, and just cheat when it came to gigs. Take the guitar cable, run it under the foot of the amp, and then out the back into a cunningly hidden laptop with whatever modelling software you want on it. Run that into the PA system. Find a spare cable and run that from the foot of the amp to its input socket and leave the amp switched on and mic'ed up, but with the master at zero. And there, you have the best of both worlds - you're a dirty, dirty liar to the audience, but you;ve got the sound you want.

 

[Lt. Bob]

I know this is a bit late now, but me, I'd do the latter, and just cheat when it came to gigs. Take the guitar cable, run it under the foot of the amp, and then out the back into a cunningly hidden laptop with whatever modelling software you want on it. Run that into the PA system. Find a spare cable and run that from the foot of the amp to its input socket and leave the amp switched on and mic'ed up, but with the master at zero. And there, you have the best of both worlds - you're a dirty, dirty liar to the audience, but you;ve got the sound you want.

well, except that live is the exact situation where modelers do the worst at.
I like all my modelers for recording .. but live, they mostly don't respond well enough like a tube amp will.
It may depend to some extent on what music you're playing. But if you're doing stuff with any subtleties to it, modelers don't handle that well.
YMMV.