Re-Amping

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4tracker

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Can someone answer these questions:

1. Is the DI signal that eventually gets reamped the same as if you recorded the guitar cab with a mic?

2. In general, what is the downside of Re-amping? It seems too good to be true.

3. Is it a significant upgrade over amp sims?

I'm trying to avoid amp sims. I live in an apartment so I can't be loud and thought reamping might be a solution...to record all the DI quietly and then reamp it, so the neighbors only have to hear things loud once.

Thanks.
 
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The DI signal is taken somewhere upstream of the amp. It could be before or after a pedal board. It is nothing like what comes from a cabinet and mic until you reamp it.

The way a guitar responds to an amp in the room is not reproducible with reamping. That may or may not matter to what you're doing.

If I have the option of getting loud then I'd rather just record the amp live. Reamping and sims have about the same appeal to me, very little, but if I had to choose I'd go with reamping.

You're still going to have to work on amp tones. That's going to make it take more than one pass, maybe several.
 
When you play through an amp/cab it's going to be different than sending a recorded DI signal to the amp/cab.
Playing with guitar/amp/cab is much more reactive.

Reaming avoids the commitment up front...which may feel like a positive...but when you reamp, it's more like applying a plugin to a recorded signal. Plus...the other tracks you record after the guitar...you won't hear the final guitar track tone until you mix.

It's only going to be better than sims if you have a variety of good amps to reamp through and find your tone.
If you have only one or two amps...then you might as well just record through one of the amps...what's the point of reamping then?

You could also set everything up to record through your amp...but then split the signal and record a DI track anyway as a security blanket, in case you really hate the amp sound later on, you'll have the DI track that you can reamp off of...
...but IMO, it just adds a lot more screwing around and/or putting things off...rather than just getting your amp tone and lying it down and moving on to something else.

Try it...find out for yourself if it's "too good to be true". :)
 
bouldersoundguy said:
The DI signal is taken somewhere upstream of the amp. It could be before or after a pedal board. It is nothing like what comes from a cabinet and mic until you reamp it.

The way a guitar responds to an amp in the room is not reproducible with reamping. That may or may not matter to what you're doing.

If I have the option of getting loud then I'd rather just record the amp live. Reamping and sims have about the same appeal to me, very little, but if I had to choose I'd go with reamping.

You're still going to have to work on amp tones. That's going to make it take more than one pass, maybe several.
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Thanks. Is it possible to get feedback via reamping? One thing that drives me crazy about sims (besides that fizzy/buzzy 8k range) is that I can't get feedback, and a lot of my music would theoretically have feedback. Very annoying.

What's the best option for an apartment setting with cranky neighbors, besides moving?
 
I get feedback from sims all the time, and I'm sure it would work with reamping too. It still needs to be fucking loud in the room at tracking time, though. ;)

A magnetic sustainer (like the Fernandez thing) can come pretty close, but is a pretty serious modification, and of course only works on the one guitar you install it in, and only if you want to hear the bridge pickup. A year or two ago, somebody had come out with a mic stand mounted magnetic sustainer, but I haven't heard much about it since the initial demos.

I have a couple of surface transducers - the ones you're supposed to plug into your iphone and stick on a cup or whatever - that I tore apart and drive from a headphone amp. Stick it on the body of the guitar (usually just below the bridge works well, but it's worth experimenting), add some compression or distortion to the send, and crank it and it can be pretty convincing. You don't get to do the thing where you move the guitar around to get different strings or harmonics going, but you can sort of fake that with an all-pass filter on the send. It's not exactly silent. The buzzer thing itself makes some noise, and the strings can actually get kind of scary loud on their own. It is definitely not as much fun as just cranking everything up and letting the air shake the guitar, though.
 
ashcat_lt said:
I get feedback from sims all the time, and I'm sure it would work with reamping too. It still needs to be fucking loud in the room at tracking time, though. ;)

A magnetic sustainer (like the Fernandez thing) can come pretty close, but is a pretty serious modification, and of course only works on the one guitar you install it in, and only if you want to hear the bridge pickup. A year or two ago, somebody had come out with a mic stand mounted magnetic sustainer, but I haven't heard much about it since the initial demos.

I have a couple of surface transducers - the ones you're supposed to plug into your iphone and stick on a cup or whatever - that I tore apart and drive from a headphone amp. Stick it on the body of the guitar (usually just below the bridge works well, but it's worth experimenting), add some compression or distortion to the send, and crank it and it can be pretty convincing. You don't get to do the thing where you move the guitar around to get different strings or harmonics going, but you can sort of fake that with an all-pass filter on the send. It's not exactly silent. The buzzer thing itself makes some noise, and the strings can actually get kind of scary loud on their own. It is definitely not as much fun as just cranking everything up and letting the air shake the guitar, though.
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Those mods are way out of my league. I'm an idiot with electronics. They sound fun, though.
I think what I'll do is track everything I can, then find somewhere to do the guitars. I have a studio guy in LA who I sort of know well enough to get a cheap rate, maybe even free, and a friend in Portland who has an amp and a house. These will be long drives but I just don't think I'll ever be satisfied with sims. Fake drums don't bother me at all, but sims drive me nuts. That fizzy shit...I don't know how people can say they sound good with that fizz frequency. And you can't EQ it out. I use them out of necessity but hate them. I hope there's a breakthrough in sims in the next few months before I'm ready to do the guitars.

Are those .1 watt amps like the Bugera v5 still too loud for an apartment setting? From what I read online even .1 is loud.
 
I can get feedback from amp sims. But in order to get feedback when you are reamping, you need to get the feedback when you are performing. If the guitar feeds back when you actually play the part, the feedback will happen when you reamp it.
 
Gain up, Add an EQ to the monitor path and crank the mids, turn up the monitors and/or touch the monitor with the headstock of the guitar.
 
Yep. Just crank it! I haven't used a single real amp on my own recordings since '95. Whatever you might think of the actual results, you can't say they lack feedback. :) Lately, I've moved my Roland keyboard amp into the studio, and have one of the outputs from my interface semi-permanently patched to it. When I want feedback (guitar, bass, or mic), I send the post-amp sim track from my DAW to that output, turn on the amp, and go.

I'm not completely sure how the surface transducer could be that tough to use. You don't actually have to mod anything. I did because I'm that kind of whackjob, but you can literally just plug it in, stick it to the guitar, and turn it up and it'll feedback one way or another. Put it close enough to the bridge, controls, or a pickup and you can get something very close to microphonic feedback even from well-potted pickups. It's actually kind of fun to play with. They're like $20 on Amazon, and you could actually use it as intended on occassion, too. :)

There are all kinds of stupid things you could do to fake feedback. It really can be as simple as just mixing a sine wave in with the guitar on the way to the amp sim. Set it relatively quiet and if there's enough distortion downstream it'll only be audible between notes. If you wanted to get fancier, you could sidechain some compression on that signal so it actually ducks the guitar. Sequence in a sine synth that more or less follows your guitar part... All kinds of crazy crap.

It's still not as much fun as actually just being fucking loud, though.
 
I actually tried using a small amp cranked up but only recording the di...Signal chain was: guitar > interface > re-amp box > amp


Then when I run the di through the ampsim, there's feedback.

Just takes a little trial/error, & thinking...it can be done though...
 
Yeah, I'd imagine you could get away with a half watt at reasonable hours in almost any situation. It's not as loud as some people's TVs. You might even be able to get some sustain/feedback out of it with enough compression/distortion. Probably have to sit right in front of the thing, and it will not be near the same as a 100W stack shaking your pants legs. 5W starts to work quite a bit better, but I still have to work pretty hard to get real serious feedback from my AC4.

It becomes a matter of looking for opportunities to get loud. I don't think it's quite as difficult as you think. If there's a lawnmower or leafblower running outside, you can get away with turning up your amp for a few minutes. Doesn't really help you when inspiration strikes a 03:00, but...
 
bouldersoundguy said:
He wants to record quietly and only make noise when reamping.
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Technically I want to record loudly and make noise all day, but... I can't because I'm too considerate. I had a noisy neighbor years ago and it was awful, so I just try to extend the courtesy. I'll have to figure something out. Anyone have experience with the .1 watt amps like the V5? I also thought about getting a pignose and bringing it out into the woods...
 
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