New equipment advice

[Clive Hugh]

Guys,
I'm looking at buying some new equipment before I take the plunge and start on my album, would appreciate some advice.
I am looking at a Zoom GM-200 guitar amp modeller, alternately there is a Behringer DI100 Ultra-DI a DI box which the ads. claim "you can even connect a guitar amp's speaker output with up to 3,000 watts" noise free, this sounds too good to be true.

Noise is the biggest problem I have, my Fender twin is the noisiest thing on the planet, plus the pedals, Boss compressor and Boss digital echo don't help either.

The next cab off the rank is again Behringer, a DSP1400P Ultramizer Pro which they claim does wonders for your final mix.

As I know absolutely nothing about
1. Behringer
2. any of these products
Any information and advice will be appreciated.

Thanks

Clive

 

[Richard Monroe]

Clive, welcome to the board. Make the decision. There's 3 ways to go. 1. Mic the damn amp and forget about modeling. Put an SM57, or beta, or SM7, or any other decent dynamic in front of the cab. Plug it into the best preamp you can lay your hands on and gate the noise. Upgrade every cable in your signal chain to the best you can get (Mogami good- HOSA bad). Then take the pedals out of the signal chain one by one and find where the noise is coming from, because most of it is probably not the Fender.
2. Go DI- get a POD Pro and find the sound you're looking for. The headphones are your friend.
3.- My way- both of the above. Jack the modeler into a clean power amp (not a guitar amp), then into a cab. Mic the cab to the best preamp you can get. One thing to watch out for. Digital modelers tend to copy the entire sound of an amp incuding noise. If you model a noisy amp, you get a noisy model. Remember to use the modeler in studio mode, which turns off the cab modeler, so the model of the cab doesn't fight with the sound of the real one. I use POD Pro to a Carver PM125 amp to a 1X12 Marshall cab with a Celestion vintage 30, and I can get almost any sound I want. Remember to get a cab that's 8 ohms, and a power amp that can be bridged to 8 ohms mono. Best of luck. Let me know how you're doing. I've been working on the first album for a while now, and I've learned one or 2 things the hard way.-Richie

P.S.- Did I mention that almost everything made by Behringer sucks, with the exception of a cheap measurement mic, the ECM8000? If you're trying to make an album, don't cut corners on your signal chain.

 

[DJL]

The Behringer ECM8000 mic, and CT100 cable tester are ok... and the HA4600 headphone amp is as good as any other cheap crap amp... but, their mixers totally suck.

 

[iwanarock]

Clive you should definitely go look at the Line 6 POD products POD, POD PRO or POD XT that provide you incredible Direct AMP modeling. I use a POD and a Bass POD all the time with great success, i like the product so much I also bought a Line 6 Flextone Stereo Head and 4X12 cabinet that basically is a real live Kickass version of the POD. The POD XT is their latest version of the POD family,I saw a demo of it last week by a Line 6 rep and was really impressed, I may have to get one of those to. The POD units are well worth the money.Good Luck.

 

[Richard Monroe]

Well, I've posted this before, but I'm still almost alone in this. Lots of people will tell you that modelers can't really replicate the nice sound of a mic'd up cab, and it's true, in my opinion. The resonance of the cab is really hard to duplicate. But if you jack your POD into an amp, the model of the amp usually clashes with the real amp. If you use a clean power amp that bridges to 8 ohms, you can drive a real cab with the POD, and mic it up also, and you'll find that the model becomes virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, but at a fraction of the volume. Of course, if you need to, you can always just go to studio mode, and jack the POD straight into the board. I also take an unprocessed line off the POD Pro to another track, so if the nice mixing engineer thinks he has a better sound, he can reprocess or reamp it.
Really- Try your POD to any clean amp, say a Samson Servo 120, Hafler, or whatever, and jack it into a cab, and mic it.-Richie

P.S.- For a really different sound, try this. Jack the POD into the board in live mode (no cab simulation), and put a small diaphragm condenser or good dynamic right on the monitors!!! What the hell, leave 'em on. Anybody ever tried mic'ing near field monitors? I'll tell you this- finding the sweet spot is *easy*.

 

[Richard Monroe]

I'm sorry, it was late, I mis-stated the signal chain in a way that creates a feedback loop. Jack the line outs of the POD (I think this works better on POD Pro, I'm not sure how many outs they give you on the kidney). in studio mode, right into powered monitors. Don't crank it until it distorts, naughty boy, then mic 1 or both . I've had my best luck using both speakers, with an Sm 57 close on one of them, and a C3 in omni backed off, as an ambient mic. The C3 picks up percussive pick noise on heavy rythym (think old Pete Townsend ala "Tommy". I back off from the C3 several feet, to get that pick noise to sit right in the mix. I'm just starting to experiment with condensers instead of the 57.
Has anybody with a POD ever tried jacking it into a near-field monitor and mic'ing it? Can you say *no fucking noise, hum, hiss, etc.? I knew you could! They told me dealing with limited equipment would cause you to try wierd alternative uses for equipment. They were right. I think I have found my basic electric sound. The first tracks done this way tonight beat any sound I've gotten using the POD DI for sound quality, and anything I've done mic'ing an amp for noise. Give it a try sometime.-Richie

 

[participant]

the karma is spooky

Too many wavelengths, and I'm ridin' all of 'em.

Richie, actually last night (before even being AWARE of this thread) I tried the J-Station into my amp on the clean setting... just for the hell of it. Nobody had suggested this, but I thought to try it out...

Amp noise... just about gone. Crank up the OUTPUT level on the J? Still no noise. The noise level remained the same (extremely low). Magic!

Recorded it with a Rode NTK 18-inches from the front of the cabinet, capsule pointed halfway between the center of the cone & edge of the speaker. Sweet, hiss free guitar.

So... Clive! Try it. Two people can corroborate it. Just don't use the PODs or J-Stations direct.... jack in to them, hook 'em up, then mic the amp.


Chad

 

[chessrock]

Wouldn't that essentially be just like micing one of the Line 6 amplifiers?

 

[Richard Monroe]

I dunno, Chess, 'cause I've never mic'd a Line6 Spyder. Most combo amps come with a certain character, and a certain noise floor. I've never really worked extensively with a modeling stage amp. Near-field monitors, and their bi-amps are certainly designed to produce a broad spectrum of audio signal, and have tweeters to produce crisp highs. I'm a hack, not an engineer. All I can tell you is it really, really works. It simply beat any sound I've been able to make with the POD using any other combination of equipment.-Richie

 

[chessrock]

All I can tell you is it really, really works. It simply beat any sound I've been able to make with the POD using any other combination of equipment.-Richie

In theory, it should. If you think of it, the thing an amp modeler would have the toughest chore replicating is the sound of an actual mic being used, and air being pushed.

So you say you're using it exactly the same as one would normally use the POD when recording . . . only reamping it by simply miking the nearfield monitors instead of running it out to an amp? Forgive my ignorance, I've rarely worked with PODs, but by Studio Mode, do you mean full amp-modeling mode, or are you bypassing the speaker simulation?

I'd like to try this out on some existing POD-recorded tracks. You got me thinking now. BTW, here's another idea for you: Try a Small-diaphragm condenser on the tweeter and a Large-diaphragm dynamic (or a 57 up close) on the woofer.

 

[Richard Monroe]

Well, Chess, I'm using the POD the way I normally do, which is to go direct from the +4dBV line outs on the POD to an amp, to a cab, then mic'd up, with an unprocessed out DI to the board as a backup. The only difference is that instead of a Carver PM125 power amp and a Marshall cab, I sent the XLR outs straight to a pair of powered monitors. What I found was that a pair of bi-amped near field monitors are the quietist, cleanest, broadest-spectrum amp/cab combo I have.
Studio/live mode- live mode is for sending the signal to a PA or poweramp/cab combo, and defeats the cab simulation. I tried it both ways. I thought it would be live mode, but studio mode boosts gain and adds presence. I have to check the specs, but it may be the POD Pro is putting out -10dBV in live mode, to match a PA's expectations. I know the studio mode is +4. Either way, studio mode simply sounds better to me, with an even lower noise floor and is much louder.
I know I've got the sound now, I just have to figure out how to mic it up. I'm on my way to Nova Scotia for a gig tomorrow, so I won't get to play around with mic'ing options until Monday, and I'll post up my experiences. One thing I'll say- I've never mic'd a cab where the sweet spot is so obvious. Problem is, it's 2-4' from the cab. At that sweet spot, I don't think a mic can separate the woofer from the tweeter anymore than your ear can, but I will try your suggestion, along with a bunch of others. *This* is when home recording becomes fun!-Richie