lousy room/direct-in

  • Thread starter Thread starter Setherial
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Setherial

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bear with me as this has been asked a hundred times before most likely. been wrestling with lousy acoustics that close-in micing does'nt seem to help (main reason for that other thread). but i have'nt tried that throwing a comforter over amp and mic trick yet!
tried direct in...it does work. without consideration i wondered why i did'nt go this route before.
so, what Is the draw back in direct in recording?
from what i can tell so far is that i have to keep the preamp settings fairly low (which for my style is yech!). but i can try; guitar>Rack>preamp>card...which should remedy this.
if so, why would anyone Not want to go this route?
:rolleyes:
 
try the comforter/tent trick, or even try recording with the amp in a closet....the general consensus says that a mic'ed amp sounds better than direct....direct seems to be somewhat sterile....

with that said, if you are happy with your direct sound, by all means do it....too many people here seem to be worried about whatothers think about their gear and/or recording process.....

and it really depends who the end user will be...if you are recording a commercial CD or a terribly important demo that will be pitched to important people, you would go to a pro studio, right?.....

what rack gear and preamp are you using to record direct?....
 
I do agree that all speaker emulators seem to suck. I just don't think they seem to do any difference, really. So try the amp. But if you are happy with the direct sound, go with it. I used it in many of my songs since I don't have an amp, and even if I'm not happy, it's usable.
 
I wouldnt say they "suck" but youll never get the sound of a nice amplifier mic'ed correctly....you can get very usable tones out of them if tweaked...if you think you are getting the true sound of several mic'ed an one box for $200, you need your head examined....but for a reasonable facsimile, they do just fine.....
 
Hmmmmmm....

For electric guitar, using a SM-57 close mic'ed, the room seems to have little if any effect on the sound. Unless you have the amp in a closet of course!

Ed
 
Gotta agree with Ed on the mic. Unless the amp is place in a corner, or you have highly reflective surfaces around, there should be no “interference” from the room. If you have a reflective surface (tile, etc), off-axis reflections from the floor can cause phasing problems. I have only run into this once in a live setting. If that’s the problem, just put a blanket on the floor and tilt the amp back. You may have a busted mic. I haven’t found 57’s to be as indestructible as everyone claims. I recently spent $300 having a batch repaired by Shure. They have recently done up on the repair price :-(

As far as DI goes, I have been hesitant to jump on the bandwagon… until last week. A friend of mine just came back from a weekend gigging in Houston. He and his bass player were raving about the POD units. So what… heard it before, right? Well, this guy happens to be one of the best musicians that I do live sound for. He plays through a Matchless and a Marshall Plexi. That’s roughly $6500 worth of gear, folks! Plus, the guy has worked at a custom shop, here in my hometown that has built custom amps for Lenny Kravitz, etc. In other words, he knows how the tone controls work ;-). His bass player is also a good friend of mine. He uses the standard vintage SVT Pro/8-10 setup. For a couple of shows, he was using this amp along with a SM400 and another Ampeg 810. Let me tell you… it was amazing.

Anyway, I ran into them at a sit in gig I was sitting in on and they couldn’t stop raving about these things. I’ll be doing some recording with them very soon and post the results.

Brad Gallagher
http://www.just-for-musicians.com/
 
xtreme....

I rather the J-Station over a Pod but then again ill throw a comforter over an amp in a closet ;) if the guy says close micing isnt helping his acoustics problem, then the comforter will solve it and if there is still a problem then he'll figure out his amp is crap....

btw, you ever heard of Z-LOT-Z from Houston?...they play Baton Rouge from time to time.....
 
As far as heavier stuff goes (metal), I know that our demo has one of the best sounding guitar tones out of all other local recordings I've heard... including recordings that involved thousands of dollars and pretty much any mic'ed amp you can think of (then again, they may not have known how to mic, either). All our recording is a combination of a few tracks of tweaked POD tone and a few tracks of tweaked distortion pedal going through clean and a speaker sim on POD in proper proportions.

Of course, not everybody has spent the last 4 months experimenting with different things with the POD, either... they just needed a recording, and didn't have much time/money to experiment.
 
i don't know what a pod is...i have a pevey backstage plus. and yes there are alot of cool instinctual sounds that don't make it through direct in. i was thinking of a large cardboard box lined with eggholder foam (i just keep putting it off!)... but all this is if i want to put alot of fancy guitar work on cd. think i need to stop trying to be a guitar hero...direct in is fine for rythms...which can be tweaked in cooledit. noticed alot of mention of Tone....this does seem to be where some of the problem is.
asi9...can u decipher those last few lines your first paragraph?
 
so pod/j-station are guitar amps? must be out of touch with guitar amps...i've never heard of either. how much? i've suspected it might be the amp. i also get this very high pitch ringing while playing leads...another tone thing. xxx
can u translate what asi9 said in the end of first paragraph?
 
Pod and J-Stations are technically amp simulators...click on the link to the J-Station in my last post $149...I paid about $275 for mine a year ago and it's very penny......basically, you plug your guitar into it and choose the amp you want, speaker cab you want, effects you want...the output of the J-Station goes into the line in of your soundcard.....

I think asi9 was saying he got all of the tones on his demo from a mixture of Pod on some tracks abd a distortion pedal going into the Pod for the speaker simulator only.....

where are u located, Seth?....
 
Gidge… where does Z-Lot-Z play in BR? I’ve never heard of them.

BTW… I was onstage at a Three Doors Down concert when I noticed the guitar player had a Line 6 into a Marshall. Then I noticed there was no mic on the cab. To put this in perspective, the FOH mixer was a Midas.

Weezer just recorded their last album using nothing but the POD for guitar and bass. They play live with that setup. That’s right… no backline. Man, it looks weird, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what we’re all headed towards. They already have one hit single off that album. Good enough for MTV=Good enough for me.

Brad Gallagher
http://www.just-for-musicians.com/
 
Gidge said:
I think asi9 was saying he got all of the tones on his demo from a mixture of Pod on some tracks abd a distortion pedal going into the Pod for the speaker simulator only.....
Click to expand...

Thanks, Gidge... that's exactly it. If you have a pedal that you absolutely love, just go through that, and into POD with the POD set on "clean", and choosing the best sounding speaker cabinet model (there are 11 I think). The tone combinations are endless.

Here's a page with some other examples of what a guy has done with it....

http://www.onlinerock.com/musicians/chrisg/POD_Samples.html
 
looks like i might've been hasty in getting this tube mp...that was my first impression of pod etc. ...preamps. i was planning on getting a rack in the next few weeks but this j-station maybe the better route. guess i should compare it to pod though.
i live on cape cod, mass. a peninsula that's a tourist trap in the summer. it gets so bad (traffic) sometimes that one can't go Any where/do Anything. but the winter is awesome....i get my favorite beaches and scenic "power" spots etc. all to myself. creativity time!
 
BTW,

If that is an Art Tube MP you are talking about, if you are doing vocals you will still need it....and if you wanna sell it, youll have no problem finding someone here to take it off your hands for a respectable price......
 
yes i use it for vox. i can use j-station for this right? also, i've tried twisting/turning mic angles to eliminate that damn pop when verbalising P's or B's! ie. vam P yric...is there a trick to this as well?
funny i've even wondered why more people did'nt go direct in then i hear about j-station etc. those clips sound good enough although it's time i really started experimenting.
ie., i'm also into spacey new age meditation music....i cut a hole in the bottom of a 5"x 1' tall plastic flower pot and stuck the mic through. i made a spitting noise into it then processed the #!@! out of it and came up with a satisfying track of sinister atmospheres...this is it! but we all know how life gets in the way.
Thanx for the help all...
 
BTW, if you were wanting to hear the "sound" I get, I posted it once before, but here's a link: www.mp3.com/psychostick
and listen to "Throwin' Down".... just ignore the crappy drums!!! :)

That's using only what I mentioned
 
hey, that's really Good guitar/bass work. i did ignore the drums.
do u know u sound like weird al yankovich? my stuff is FAR more atmospheric....which i like but it was a fluke to begin with.
hey, maybe i can nag u for some guitar tips!
although i'm obviously not into your style.
one thing....do u get days or stetches where it seems like u just can't play that good or even be creative? i've been playing off&on for 10 years but today i feel like i suck.
i should just drop this but; i'm into mysticism and all that....so i try to get "in that zone" and catch my inspirations on record. ALL of my tracks are like this. i write nothing... ALL of it is off the top.
it's working but i could never play live that's for sure!
 
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