Question for Recording With Long Cable Runs

ChuckU

ChuckU

New member
My favorite scenario when recording a band in my home studio is to have the drummer in a separate room, all other musicians in the control room with me. We can see each other thru a glass door I bought at Home Depot (not soundproof, but everything is pretty much bleed-free.) The drummer has cans on but the other musicians and I can listen thru my studio monitors. Bass, keys go direct and vocals are scratch the first time thru because of the bleed factor and my limited iso options.

Anyway, I like to mic the guitar amp in a closet that's a good 20-25 feet from the control room, where the guitar player is sitting. My longest guitar cords are 15 footers, so I usually couple them with a tuner or an effects pedal that is off. It works, but it's kind of lame.

One option I rarely exploit is my snake. I have a 50-footer with the female end in the drum room. It has 16 xlr's and 4 unbalanced 1/4's. I could take a 1/4 cord from the snake to the amp input on that side. On the control room side, I could have the guitarist plug into my patch panel, opposite the appropriate 1/4" male. What scares me about that is a possible 80' unbalanced run.

I wonder if I should use the snake option just mentioned, get a long balanced 1/4, or a direct box or two (not sure how I'd configure that.)

FWIW, I do not get noticable noise with the tuner option, but I welcome suggestions. Thanks!
 
If you aren't getting any noise problems with the way you are doing things now, leave it. There is no "right" way to do this stuff - I think the best solutions are the crazy ways people with limited options go about getting good results.

However, to explain further, using a DI alone isn't going to help you, since you are looking for options for sending the guitar's output to the amp itself.

One idea I have had for long runs using a DI box would be to go guitar -> active DI -> external preamp -> line level cable runs to amp room into reamp box -> reamp box out to amp.

Not sure if that will actually work, but it seems to be the entire recording chain of DI'ing a guitar track and later reamping it, without the recorder or the time difference in the chain.
 
I'd use the longer cable over running the signal through a tuner. But in any case, since you already have the snake, you can try it out and see which you like better.
 
ChuckU said:
My favorite scenario when recording a band in my home studio is to have the drummer in a separate room, all other musicians in the control room with me. We can see each other thru a glass door I bought at Home Depot (not soundproof, but everything is pretty much bleed-free.) The drummer has cans on but the other musicians and I can listen thru my studio monitors. Bass, keys go direct and vocals are scratch the first time thru because of the bleed factor and my limited iso options.

Anyway, I like to mic the guitar amp in a closet that's a good 20-25 feet from the control room, where the guitar player is sitting. My longest guitar cords are 15 footers, so I usually couple them with a tuner or an effects pedal that is off. It works, but it's kind of lame.

One option I rarely exploit is my snake. I have a 50-footer with the female end in the drum room. It has 16 xlr's and 4 unbalanced 1/4's. I could take a 1/4 cord from the snake to the amp input on that side. On the control room side, I could have the guitarist plug into my patch panel, opposite the appropriate 1/4" male. What scares me about that is a possible 80' unbalanced run.

I wonder if I should use the snake option just mentioned, get a long balanced 1/4, or a direct box or two (not sure how I'd configure that.)

FWIW, I do not get noticable noise with the tuner option, but I welcome suggestions. Thanks!
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mercenary audio carries a device made by little labs called the "STD" signal transmission device.

It allows you to have the player anywhere and run the instrument signal at line evel over mic cables. The special cable is 1/4 ts on one end (plugs into guitar) converts the signal to line level, with xlr on the other end. You run the instrument through mic cables over long distances, to the STD box on the other end, which has 2 amp outputs. The box converts the signal back to instrument level, and now you can drive two amps over long distance.

we have one, i'd like four :)
 
The easy way is to simply get a couple of extension cables (1/4" male on one end, 1/4" female on the other.) Radio Shack even carries these but the ones from the shack aren't very heavy duty so they wont handle a lot of yanking them around. Just be careful when you lay them out, be sure they aren't parallel to any power cables as they will pick up some hum. Your best bet would be to make a cable long enough to reach, use a shielded cable and good plugs and be sure the solder joints are good. 20-25 feet shouldn't cause a noise problem but for anything longer you should use XLR cables.
 
Dani Pace said:
20-25 feet shouldn't cause a noise problem but for anything longer you should use XLR cables.
Click to expand...



but it could cause a capacitance (i think!) issue, where basically your jack will start to act like a LPF.

Your best bet would be to go thru an active DI that acts as a bridge. I know behringer make a DI that does this, I've used it before and it worked great for the job, which was exactly like what you want to do.
 
Have you seen this capacitance eliminator cable?

http://www.aqdi.com/zerocap.htm

I bought one for my brother, but haven't heard it yet. I'm visiting him next week, so hopefully I'll get a chance to hear it then and compare to a normal guitar cable.
 
Do you have a separate head and cabinet? If you do, keep the head in the control room with you and run a long speaker cable to the cabinet. If not, check out the Little Labs STD as was suggested previously.
 
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