Pitfalls of low-budget acoustic guitar recording

Hammerstone

Hammerstone

Out of style
Hi guys. Apologies if this is the wrong place for this post, but I thought maybe going right to the tape experts would save me the rhetorical "just why aren't you recording on a computer anyway?" questions. I've taken this just about as far as I can on my own, and so far I haven't come across any solutions to my problem, which is this:

I can't record the acoustic guitar part without it sounding somewhat distorted in the higher frequencies. Everything else sounds exactly as it should (and did when I recorded it), but there are subtle changes going on in the guitar track that I have not been able to correct at present.

Originally, I recorded the guitar parts with either an SM57, or pickup through an LR Baggs acoustic DI, to a Behringer mixer to my tape deck. I'm planning on re-recording all the guitar parts, but all my tests so far haven't shown any improvement. I've tried new strings, a different guitar, different signal chains, different mic placements, recording at lower volumes, NR on/off. So far, nothing's worked.

The only thing I haven't done is try heavier strings yet, and the next time I make the journey to town, I'll pick up what I can afford, but inexpensive's been the name of this game since the beginning. Do heavy strings make a difference when recording?

What I would like to do is have a good enough master tape that I can pass off to make a limited cassette run. My multitracks are recorded at 7.5IPS, and the guitar parts, now that I know to listen for, do seem to be slightly distorted, but it becomes really salient when mixing to cassette at 3 3/4IPS or 1 7/8IPS, which I assume, isn't helped by smaller track width and slower speeds. Even when I record directly to cassette it sounds bad. I've been pulling my hair out over this for weeks and weeks; I'd rather try everything else before I start messing around with my head alignment, but I'm running out of options. Any suggestions for me?
 
Have you tried recording to computer just as a control? It may not be the tape recording at all but something else in the signal path?

Just a suggestion.
Tim
 
Kind of. I've done some recordings with a Blue Snowball USB mic into Audacity (definitely sounded different...actually not bad at all), but not anything so complicated as taking my entire setup the way it is and just plugging into a comp instead of my Teac. I'll go try...


...and it does NOT seem to be doing the same thing when i route the signal to the computer instead of the tape deck. Actually, the next thing I plan on doing is playing the multitrack tapes through my church's sound system (with digital mixer) and seeing just how much high-freq distortion there is on first pass...
 
Last edited:
In what shape is your TEAC? I'm not an expert at R2R, but I know that if the heads are dirty, misaligned, in need of demagnetizing, or the bias is not set properly, I think you can experience some symptoms like you're describing (maybe---someone else could speak more authoritatively on this). Or it could be something with the electronics in the TEAC.

Any way you could post some samples of the tracks with the distortion you're describing?
 
Hammerstone said:
...and it does NOT seem to be doing the same thing when i route the signal to the computer instead of the tape deck. ...
Click to expand...
Well I was going to say yes strings- weight, height, and pick weight/thickness largely defines the clarity' and tone style, dynamics (string buzz' or not..
But it looks like you might be on to some other issues instead :thumbs up:
 
+1 to the beagle, I won't claim to be an *expert* either, but please provide some more info. What Teac, what kind of tape, what levels, what is the Teac calibrated for (if known) and how fresh the cal is. It may be a bias issue, something else in your signal chain, a lot of things, it could also have nothing to do with the tape deck or signal chain and all to do with microphone placement/playing style.
 
Since the most modestly priced stereo cassette decks can capture the details and nuance of acoustic guitar without distortion, this likely has nothing to do with budget per se. I’m suspecting recording technique and/or defects in equipment. So, it could be anything from micing technique, to interconnectivity, to a poorly designed or misbehaving device in your signal path. We would have to know more details about your recording setup, including distance of mic from guitar and model numbers of mixer, tape deck, etc. If it happens that everything is in good order, light compression can be helpful for acoustic guitar generally speaking, no mater if recording to analog or digital. Gain staging is a likely issue. What are your level settings and meter readings from input to output of mixer? What are the meters on your R2R deck telling you and are you working with analog VU meters or LED meters.

You can narrow things down while troubleshooting with headphones. If your problem is at the mixer stage you’ll hear the distortion while recording with headphones through your Behringer. If no distortion there, you’re likely hitting your tape decks too hard from the Behringer outputs. If you detect distortion already in the mixer it could be anything. What are you using there? I’m wondering what kind of metering you have. Hopefully overdrive LEDs on each channel.
 
How is your gain-staging? You're not just cranking your levels too hot, are you? I have never known any Behringer mixer to have much headroom, you have to be pretty conservative with your settings or things will get ugly.
 
Hey guys, sorry it's taken this long to respond. Thanks for all the replies! I was planning on getting all those answers together for you yesterday, but things came up, and I ran out of time, so I'll answer what I can.

The last thing I was working on was patching my multitracks through my church's digital sound system, and so far, I think the guitar parts sound fine (perhaps a little out of tune), so I'm considering just mastering to cd and having done with it, if it's going to cause me much more trouble. That would seem to indicate that whatever's happening is happening when I mix to cassette (Tascam 122). I've messed around with the front bias/record level options, but didn't seem to improve anything. Also, the vocals don't sound off, like the guitar parts do.

Anyway, here's what I was doing: EITHER Shure SM57 mic or L.R. Baggs Para-acoustic D.I. going to the Behringer mixer (not entirely sure since I don't have it in front of me, but it's pretty damn similar to the Euroback UB802) to my Teac A-2340RS. My multitracks are on a reel of Scotch 203. From there, I ran them through a Tascam 244 (only good for a mixer at the moment) to a Tascam 122 (original model, with 3.75ips capability). Maxell XLII90 cassettes.

I never thought of listening off the mixer, but I've been doing quite a bit of playing around with levels, seeing what difference there was between setting the tape inputs somewhere around 3, and setting them around 7, just trying to get the noise floor as low as possible. A lot of that stuff is what I've been doing in the last month, and going back, I can detect more room noise in the original recording than I really want, so I'm sure the mics were running hotter than they should have been, but there's no difference when I record either to cassette. As for mic placement, originally it might have been positioned directly in front of the sound hole, as close as I could get it and not brush it with my hand. Later on, I was trying to follow the mic placement I found in the first post on the Recording Techniques board here (sorry, can't post links), but that didn't help.

As far as levels, it was done much by ear, but so far, the bias doesn't seem to be off, and I was apt to err on the side of caution as far as headroom was concerned. The tape decks are at least 2nd hand, and it's true that I haven't done much servicing to them besides making sure the tape path was clean. The thing is that except for the guitar parts, performances on both machines has been quite beyond satisfactory.

That's another point I'd like to make: while I wasn't originally that concerned with making sure things were done absolutely "properly," going back and redoing them hasn't been an improvement, which has frustrated me to no end.

mixsit said:
Well I was going to say yes strings- weight, height, and pick weight/thickness largely defines the clarity' and tone style, dynamics (string buzz' or not..
But it looks like you might be on to some other issues instead :thumbs up:
Click to expand...

Possibly, but let me be a bit more forthcoming here: I have a '66 Gibson Hummingbird, which I'm sure should be a pretty good sounding guitar, but it has a few problems that I haven't taken care of yet, and due to that, I'm running really light strings on it at the moment (9's or 10's I think). I used a medium pick, but mostly it's just my fingers. This is really the last thing I can think of myself, and when I have the opportunity, I'll be buying some heavy (or at least medium) strings to try out. Is this enough that it could make a marked difference between 1/4" 4-track at 7.5ips and 1/8" 4-track at either 3.75ips or 1.875ips? Because I'd sooner go out and buy a couple packs of strings than start taking the cassette deck apart and doing things to the heads when I don't really know how to do bias/alignment adjustments (or understand them), and considering that only the guitar parts are affected, is head alignment really the problem?
 
You can get a fair idea how a tape machine is biased by recording two tones. One at 1kHz and another at 10kHz at -15vu or so but it is better to read the levels with a DVM on the line outs (do check however that the meter is flat to 10k! Some cheapo's are not).

If the 10k level is the same as 1kHz or a dB or so down your bias is probably right. If 10k is higher you are underbiased and will suffer distortion. If the HF level is way down, 6dB or more say, then overbiased or worn heads.

You can test a cassette the same way but the level must be at neg 20 and use 330Hhz and 10kHz.

The tones can be generated in most DAW software. Audacity is one such and gives you "coloured" noises to boot. In fact a DAW such as Samplitude is an excellent test bed for tape machines!

Dave.
 
Still so many things it could be. It may not be just one weak link in the chain, but cumulative. One thing about the tape for your R2R; Scotch 203 is a very old tech (early 60’s) and not so hot tape formulation. It doesn’t take much to overload it. Whatever else might be going on with your setup I would use another kind of tape. Scotch Dynarange, 212 and 229 would be much better, and of course 207 would be sweet if you can find it. Other brands for professional results for your deck include Quantegy 407, Maxell UD 35-90 and XLI 35-90B. Even Radio Shack Super Tape or “Studio Quality tape” will smoke 203.

The original Tascam 122 cassette deck is getting on in years. The frequency response and crosstalk were not great by later standards and if you have significant head wear any jangly sounds like guitar or bell-like tones would understandably cause distortion, while vocals will not. You’ll have similar issues if the bias is way off

Finally, I don’t trust Behringer. You might get a good performing unit or not. Quality control is the number one issue, and the same now goes for all the clones from China stamped Alesis, Mackie and several off brands that are identical inside and out except for label and subtle cosmetic differences.

A word about USB… “NO!” I mean there’s one word that sums it up and that word is “NO.” Of all the goofiness that’s taken hold in the recording industry, the proliferation of USB devices is proof positive that only about one person in one thousand has any clue at all. USB is a toy and doesn’t belong in a professional environment or any environment for real-time recording where audio quality is the point of reference. It’s ok for messing around, but IMO there’s a fine line between messing around and wasting your time. It doesn’t matter who makes the device. It’s a limitation of the USB spec, including 2.0 and 3.0. Firewire is no better.

For starters get your analog decks checked over and calibrated, then work from there. One thing that’s hard to get a good feel for while trying to iron out problems via text forums is it's hard to tell if a member understands recording fundamentals or not. That could be another issue as a lot can go wrong there. You can’t replace some hands-on time with someone who knows. However, If you have a natural feel for it about everything you need to know to get a decent recording is in the manual to your Tascam 244. If you don’t have one let me know. I’ve got it and many others on pdf. Tascam manuals are a mini-course in basic recording and will get you in the right direction.
 
Thanks for the input guys. Honestly, I think it might be the 122 after all, which is what I feared. As far as I can see, the heads look ok, and if the bias is way off, then it'll probably take a while to fix. I guess I can't complain too much, as I got the 122 for pretty cheap, and it works fine for commercial cassettes, but doing anything involving the heads fills me with unspeakable dread, and I hoped it would be something else less technical and involved.

Thanks for the offer of the manual. I do have one, which I read entirely a year ago. It definitely was useful for getting the fundamentals, and that knowledge has served me well as I've been doing a lot of live sound engineering over the last year (some live recording).

Yeah with the Scotch 203, it was just kind of born out of necessity really. I had one reel of unused tape at the time, and this was it. I didn't even know (and still don't actually) anything too definite about it, but the real benefit for me was that it was longer, and fit my entire album of about 40mins (it is dynarange, btw). I recently picked up a couple sealed reels of Ampex 642 (well, I guess I'm not progressing here in terms of tape technology or recency of manufacture), but that was a lucky find. It's usually what I can scrounge at the moment. Of course, if I had the resources, I'd be going right for GP9 I think, but that would have to wait until I have equipment that can actually handle it first. As it may be, I wouldn't want to go back and re-record the entire album, but thanks for the recommendations on other tapes. I will for sure keep my eyes open for that stuff, and hopefully can come across some reels sooner or later, if I'm doing my next album on the same tape deck.

Don't worry about the USB mic. My dad gave me it as a present, and I only use it for recording 1-track demos on the computer. It pissed me off that he didn't get me something more *real* but oh well. Of course, considering that my friend just released an album recorded and produced entirely on an iphone, I'd say I'm still ahead in terms of technology...
 
You could do worse than 642. It is *close* to Maxell UD. And Maxell UD is, well, legendary in some circles.... I have about a dozen 7" reels of 642, and about 150,000 feet of its thicker variant 632.
 
Beck said:
A word about USB… “NO!” I mean there’s one word that sums it up and that word is “NO.” Of all the goofiness that’s taken hold in the recording industry, the proliferation of USB devices is proof positive that only about one person in one thousand has any clue at all. USB is a toy and doesn’t belong in a professional environment or any environment for real-time recording where audio quality is the point of reference. It’s ok for messing around, but IMO there’s a fine line between messing around and wasting your time. It doesn’t matter who makes the device. It’s a limitation of the USB spec, including 2.0 and 3.0. Firewire is no better.
Click to expand...

These statements have sat here for three days and no one has said anything in response. Anybody care to make a comment?

Tim
 
Tim Gillett said:
These statements have sat here for three days and no one has said anything in response. Anybody care to make a comment?

Tim
Click to expand...

I noticed.
I was about to wade in, pointing out amongst other things that RME make a superb usb 2.0 AI and MOTU are also pretty good. My own NI Ka6 I would put up against any FW device in terms of sound quality and latency (in the same price range).

But then he goes on to condem Fussywire as well! Htf else do you connect an AI to a computer? (yes! I know about PCI/PCIe cards and outboard breakout boxes. Got an ESI 1010e myself).

Dave.
 
Blue Jinn said:
You could do worse than 642. It is *close* to Maxell UD. And Maxell UD is, well, legendary in some circles.... I have about a dozen 7" reels of 642, and about 150,000 feet of its thicker variant 632.
Click to expand...

I think that works out to 125 reels (7"?) of Ampex 642. Good Lord, how did you manage to accumulate so much?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top