loud guitar recording in the apartment

[HomeNoiseRecord]

Just to chime in, a little late here...

120 watt guitar amps exist for a very different reason than 5 watt amps. The point of a 5 watt amp, at least today, is to allow you to overdrive the power amp at a reasonable volume, and to give you poweramp distortion. This is great for bluesy and blues/rock tones - SRV, Led Zep, etc - where you're not using much preamp gain, and want the poweramp to distort and saturate into this nice, spongy, touch-sensitive, thick, round guitar sound.

The point of 120 watt guitar amps is the complete opposite - you want them NOT to overdrive the power section, at gigging volumes. Generally, high wattage amps are also either designed to stay crystal clean at any level, or are mated with high gain preamps, so you can get a good preamp distortion sound, and then send it through a poweramp without overdriving it further. This is pretty useful for metal, where aggressive, crunchy distortion is part of the sound, but you also want to preserve low end clarity. A tube poweramp typically will start to distort on the low end first, so by getting the bulk of your distortion from the preamp and then at most adding a bit of natural tube compression from the power amp, you still preserve a lot of low end punch and impact.

It's just two diffrent ways of getting a distorted sound, distorting the preamp or distorting the poweramp. They're both great sounds, but for different reasons and are best in different applications. You're not going to nail the Nevermore sound out of a Fender Champ (at least not without a couple good distortion pedals and keeping an eye on your output knob so you don't saturate the power section), but you're also not going to get the Led Zep I sound out of a Dual Rectifier (at least, not without turning it up to absolutely stupid volumes).

Good post from this man.

HNR

 

[Ephi82]

First of all, "pro" is short for "professional". And a professional is someone who
does this as a profession. Not just someone who knows about something.
And, as massive has pointed out, there have been pro's who have been
posting and helping you out, yet you're simply trying to do the impossible.

Second of all, give over with all your "tears" shit. I've been posting on two
or three of your threads, trying to help you. When, in reality, the questions
you ask don't need to be answered by anyone else other than yourself. Stop
being lazy and just try things out. What's the harm? It's digital recording,
it's not gonna cause you a friggin cent on tape if you mess up or do too much
and you have to throw some of it away. I experiment at home all the time,
it costs me nothing.

So instead of thinking that we're all crying because we can't seem to help you,
think about how lazy you gotta be to always be looking for the quick fix, when
really, the BETTER "fix" is to just DIY. In the time it's taken you to
ask all these questions, you could have solved half your problems.

I had no problem trying to help you until you started acting like a sarcastic
child.

Amen, I agree

 

[marioantigod]

It's just two diffrent ways of getting a distorted sound, distorting the preamp or distorting the poweramp. They're both great sounds, but for different reasons and are best in different applications. You're not going to nail the Nevermore sound out of a Fender Champ (at least not without a couple good distortion pedals and keeping an eye on your output knob so you don't saturate the power section), but you're also not going to get the Led Zep I sound out of a Dual Rectifier (at least, not without turning it up to absolutely stupid volumes).

yes. now i see. i had a bad understanding thinking that for my metal records i need a bigger poweramp distortion that brutally distorts preamp, and also moves a speaker making it to distort also. it is better for hard rock apps when preamp is not so strong. acdc, led zep, etc.. ye?


so, for the metal app all i need is to dial a good preamp distortion. i have a 120w laney with tube preamp only, (so,basically, it is a solid state). it tends to distort in the very early stages. i cant almost get any clean sound out of it.

A tube poweramp typically will start to distort on the low end first, so by getting the bulk of your distortion from the preamp and then at most adding a bit of natural tube compression from the power amp, you still preserve a lot of low end punch and impact.

i believe that at max gain and at low volume amp does only the "angry bee" job. i still feel that without cranking the amp i wont be able to deliver a more crunchy sound. how loud 120w amp should be to capture good metal sound and help sm57 to capture the best as a mic?? what are the standard values here? what is important here?

thank u for the wonderful post. pro!

p.s. oh sh.. i became a senior member now i think a god exists! i'll choose dzeus or apolo. still choosing

 

[marioantigod]

..................................................

 

[Farview]

The problem you are going to run into with your amp is that a solid state power section won't distort, or at least not the way you want it to. That is the difference between a solid state amp and a tube amp. The power tubes break up and add to the distortion of the preamp. A solid state amp will cleanly amplify the preamp distortion. You will still get speaker distortion either way, but that takes volume.

The good metal sound that you seem to be after comes from a combination of preamp distortion, power amp distortion and speaker distortion. (and possibly pedal distortion in front of it) A little distortion from every part of the signal chain will add up to what you are looking for.

 

[marioantigod]

The good metal sound that you seem to be after comes from a combination of preamp distortion, power amp distortion and speaker distortion. (and possibly pedal distortion in front of it) A little distortion from every part of the signal chain will add up to what you are looking for.

ye, thats it.
but, since im broke, i'll try to punish my old transistor laney anyway.
i'l try to crank the volume somehow without breaking my windows. ahrrrrrr
i'll post results to listen for u.
thanks friend. have a nice week.

ps. i had a semitube marshall avt100, but when i bought that laney, im f** in love with that box.
these amps have something interesting in my opinion.

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I think poweramp compression is more important than poweramp distortion for recording metal guitars, but really by that point we're just talking semantics.

I've heard plenty of perfectly decent recordings done with solid state amps, some even at fairly low volume. If your Laney sounds like "bees," my first two guesses would be 1.) you're using a LOT of gain, and 2.) you're boosting the high end, probably the bass as well, and scooping the mids. Neither will give you really "full" sounding heavy guitars.

Anyway, if you like the sound of the solid state Laney, then if I were you I'd stop asking questions for a couple weeks, and instead grab a SM57 and spend some time experimenting with mic positions and amp settings. You're clearly happy with the sound of the amp, if I understand your last point right - what you need to do is to find out how to capture that sound with a microphone. That's really the sort of thing you can best learn by trial and error, but the best tip I can give you to get started is that you need to remember that there's a world of difference between listening to an amp six feet off the ground and maybe 10 feet away (like you normally do when you're playing it) and listening to it with your ear right up against the speaker, an inch or so away (like a microphone does). You might need to EQ a bit until the sound you're getting from immediately in front of the speaker is where you want it to be.

 

[philbagg]

if I were you I'd stop asking questions for a couple weeks

Just like to reinforce this

I'm terrible

 

[marioantigod]

thanks..............................

 

[miroslav]

... then if I were you I'd stop asking questions for a couple weeks, and instead grab a SM57 and spend some time experimenting with mic positions and amp settings.

I guess he understood it better when you said than when I said it (a few times).

 

[mshilarious]

now i will sound like amateur, cause i really am.
but why then 120w amps are for?
if u can mic your small 15 or 30w amp to a PA and rehearse, or record. and even carry it in your bag.
why most of the guys carry huge stacks and record?
w do u think?
thank u.

Because they drag their big heavy amps to real recording studios. That's the PRO answer. Why do you want a PRO answer when you are taking an obviously amateur approach? There must be dozens of studios in London with a real live or iso room where you could turn your amp up to 11. Hire one of them.

In the meantime, a lesson in physics. Let's say you are using a driver with sensitivity of 85dBSPL @ 1m / W. That's on the low end of the range, it could be 6dB louder (and therefore worse for your purposes). Use this formula to determine the output at 120W* (it's the same result with 4 drivers at 30W each, so we can treat it as a single driver):

dBSPL = 10 * log (120W / 1W) + 85 = 106dBSPL.

That's loud. Your neighbors won't tolerate anything they can easily hear in their flats, so you'd need transmission loss of at least 50dB. More like 60dB, really. And the lows those palm-muted chords through off, those aren't easy to stop. Transmission loss requires a) lots of mass, and b) airtight construction.

But first you have to worry about structural transmission. If that amp is sitting on the floor, it will directly vibrate the floor and use your neighbor's ceiling below as a speaker cone. So you need to isolate the amp from the floor. THEN you can worry about construction that will give you 50dB of transmission loss on top of that. If the existing construction is wood, it's probably good for mid-30s. Cinder block with steel joists & concrete floors is better. It gets much harder from there.

Good luck . . .



* Since log is obviously, well, a logarithm function, you can see why smaller amps aren't really that much quieter. That's because our ears perceive an exponential change as linear. An 8W amp on full blast with the same speaker = 94dBSPL. Still plenty loud, but 12dB quieter from your neighbor's perspective.

 

[marioantigod]

That's loud.

ye. i never thought cranking my amp to all 120w.
i think i will find my sweet area in a bit lower volumes.
since as u say there r no rules, i'll try recording in different volumes and will find something for more isolation.
i just need to concentrate on what i want to hear from my amp, and go for it.
i hope i'll have more time for that in the near future.
thank u, physics wizard.