Reamping Guitar

[Greg_L]

for sure if I wanted to start using this I'd buy a reamping box. There are some that don't cost much.
But with my stable of amps, why would I? It's not like I'm recording some masterpiece that's gonna rock the music world if only we'd just gotten a slightly different amp sound on that one guitar.

I totally agree. I hate the whole concept of reamping. It's so lame. How did bands ever record anything without reamping, pitch correction, and drum sample replacement?

 

[Lt. Bob]

I totally agree. I hate the whole concept of reamping. It's so lame. How did bands ever record anything without reamping, pitch correction, and drum sample replacement?

and they mostly recorded better stuff so why's that?

 

[miroslav]

I couldn't agree more.
I have all the reamp tools, and yet never saw a real need for them....I just thought I should have them in the studio along with a lot of other tools I don't always use.

Digital recording really blew open that stuff....with people wanting to decide on everything............later....and/or be able to change everything a thousand times after the tracking was long done and gone.

 

[Lt. Bob]

Digital recording really blew open that stuff....with people wanting to decide on everything............later....and/or be able to change everything a thousand times after the tracking was long done and gone.

yep ..... it has resulted in music that could been done by computers. Sterile and devoid of human imperfections.

Of course there are exceptions so don't anyone go all nuts on me but in general overly 'tweaked to perfection' music loses something IMHO.

 

[Greg_L]

and they mostly recorded better stuff so why's that?

It's really simple:

1) They played better
2) Only good players had access to recording studios.

Now any shmoe can record his garbage with budget equipment using all sorts of tricks and gadgets and immediately release it to the world. It's a blessing and a curse.

 

[Lt. Bob]

It's really simple:

1) They played better
2) Only good players had access to recording studios.

Now any shmoe can record his garbage with budget equipment using all sorts of tricks and gadgets and immediately release it to the world. It's a blessing and a curse.

I think you've pretty much nailed it.

 

[c7sus]

??? We have not "matched" source and sink impedances in audio for decades.

Dave.

From what I have read and hopefully understand, too much of a mismatch turns the circuit into a low-pass filter with a much higher cutoff than a circuit where the impedances are more closely matched. From what I read I also agree that you want to source impedance to be lower than the input impedance of the gear you are patching into.

I think it is following the same principle as transformer taps in mic preamps. You choose a different tap that interacts differently with the mic and you get the effect of different frequency responses from a single mic.

FWIW the specs on Radial's passive reamp box are 5Kohm output, decidedly lower than the 130Kohm of using the JDI in "reverse". But the input of the passive reamp is +4dB @ 600ohms which is a much closer match to the output of a soundcard than would be running from a soundcard into a -30dB/30Kohm- 1Mohm input of a guitar amp.

I would like to know what the output impedance of this little box is. I have been eyeballing one of these for the last couple of years. The input is variable from 33Kohms to 1Meg, which supposedly is designed to serve as both a buffer and impedance-matching device for guitars and synths. I have yet to read anything negative about the SGBB anywhere on the interwebs.

Steel Guitar Black Box

 

[c7sus]

I totally agree. I hate the whole concept of reamping. It's so lame. How did bands ever record anything without reamping, pitch correction, and drum sample replacement?

They had way bigger budgets than most artists have today, for one thing. Pink Floyd would never get a year to camp out in Abbey Road to make DSOTM under the current conditions.

And not everybody with a credit card had access to recording tools, as is the case today. Record companies had A&R guys to filter out the good players from the bad, and if the band was only passable as a live act they could always be replaced by studio sidemen to knock out the recordings.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Like I said, been down this road so many times I should know better. I have always avoided passive DIs where possible, too. I recently added some to my live rig thinking they would make things run more smoothly. Turned out they just added noise. A couple custom cables work much better.

Passive DIs can do things no custom cable can do. If they add noise then you're doing something wrong or they're crappy DIs. Of course there are times when the right cable is the better option.

 

[ashcat_lt]

The passive DIs attenuate the signal even lower, then it picks up noise while being gained back up to something usable. The straight cable maintains unity from the output of my pedals, so that much less gain is necessary.

Again, all I've ever said is that you've got a choice. You can either spend the time and money to pay somebody to wire a transformer to a potentiometer, or you can try - just fricken try! - plugging in the cable you've already got. It's free and easy and, as long as you're a little bit careful, there's no good reason it won't work in most situations. But you can spend money first and ask questions never if it makes you more comfortable.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I'm all for trying a straight cable. Often it will work. If not, having some DIs around to try doesn't hurt. You can get away with a lot of things with an active instrument output.

"Picks up noise" makes me suspect a grounding issue more than a levels issue.

 

[ecc83]

On the guitar amp input Z matter. Virtually all modern amps and pedals are 1 meg, + or - 1% in some cases. ("we" dare not do otherwise! The amp/pedal maker would get bolloked on forums like this every whichway till Christmas!) .

Then, on most amps, there is a LPfilter formed by a resistor, usually 68k and about 100-150puff of capacitance (If you can't see the cap in your valve amp that's cos it ain't physically there! Go Google "Miller effect"). The upshot of this very high impedance is that amps do not care a gnat's whatsits what the source impedance is so long as it is below about 100k . So, whether you drive an amp from a guitar pup, a buffered pedal (Zout < 1k), a desk/AI output or, as I do most days, the very low Z of a Neutrik A1 analyser, the frequency response will be exactly the same.

Now, guitars and their sensitivity to loading. For sure, the inductive pickup and the cable capacitance form a filter network and the load you put on it will affect the response. These response changes will be modest but I would be the LAST to say that people cannot hear them! This is true in isolation on an A/B test, whether they would notice after a few bev'voirs down the Mucky Duck???

But all this is academic, what matters is that peeps get the sound they want. HOW you do it is largely immaterial, none of what has been said so far constitutes any danger to persons or equipment.

And BTW: By "matching" I meant "image" matching where source and sink are the same impedance. THAT we do not do.

Dave.

 

[ashcat_lt]

"Picks up noise" makes me suspect a grounding issue more than a levels issue.

It was quite definitely just extra noise caused by dropping the level something like 20db, adding the normal noise along along the cable run (yes, maybe a little better because balanced) and in the preamp itself and then being gained up to a decent line level, and then being gained up enough to overdrive/distort the amp sim. I'm pretty confident I'd recognize the noise caused by a poor ground along the way, and a ground loop would likely be helped by the DI, rather than caused. It's broadband noise and running a psuedo-balanced cable from the pedals to the mic input is quite noticeably quieter, especially since there's three of these. You're free to second-guess me from across the country, or you could come to WI and I'll buy you a beer and demonstrate.

 

[danielbier]

I understand that some people consider re-amping as somewhat of a cop-out. But I firmly believe in using all of these tools as exactly what they are. TOOLS. To get the best possible record out of the limited time available.

During a mix, I may realize that the guitar tone isn't quite what the song needed. Luckily, I have a clean, perfectly edited signal ready to be shot out of my DAW, into an amp, and I can switch between amps, settings, mic placement, etc, after the fact without having to recapture the original performance. And I can get the exact tone I was looking for to compliment the rest of the record way later in the process when we have all musical information available to us.

It saves a lot of time and heartache when you realize the original tone might not work for the mix.

Plus, it's great if you want to blend different amp sounds with the same performance. You may want to blend a Fender Princeton with a Plexi for whatever reason, but lack the ability to split to both amps at once (or lack the ability to isolate the two). You can reamp to as many amps as you want with the exact same already-perfect performance. Then you can mix the two to taste without having to worry about one note being off, or timing dropping at some point.

It's a tool. That's it. And it can be used successfully in a variety of ways that aren't just "YOU SUCKED AT GETTING GOOD TONE, POSER."

 

[Justsomeguy]

I know it was said waaaayyy earlier, but the point about people DI'ing and mic'ing a guitar amp with the thought process that "meh, i can reamp it later" and then not spending the time getting the amp sound right through the mic is an issue that i keep seeing more and more of and really grinds my gears. It's like autotune; just because you can doesn't mean you should rely on it. Don't get me wrong, i am one of those guys who captures a DI as well as a mic'd signal just in case but i can count on both hands the amount of times i've reamped a guitar in the last 10 years, and most of that has been with amp sims to either replace or, more commonly, just blend in with the mic'd signal. It's just my opinion, but i can't help but think that if you go into these situations with the mind set of "we'll just reamp" then you may as well just have DI'd your guitar, done away with the amp, and saved yourself a shed load of time and hassle. Or, in a less cynical way, DI the guitar and have it playing through the amp just not mic'd up so you can get some feel whilst playing.

That's why a reamp box is beneficial, or at least running the line level through a buffered pedal for the quick and easy route. There's all kinds of ways around it. But just running straight line level into the amp can be noisy and it's just fundamentally not the right way to go.

Gregs comment caught my attention because that is my experience of trying to reamp from a line level turned down and then using a buffered pedal inbetween. The last thing i had to properly reamp was some tracks for my bands last album after we had re-arranged some of the songs and re-recorded the bass with a heavier tone so that our initial guitar tones didn't work. Seeing as our guitarist recently became a father, re-recording his parts were going to be very, very difficult so reamping was our saving grace. I don't own a reamp box, but i did try going straight from a line level out from my AI with the volume dropped a shed load and it just seemed to rob the amp of tone, especially in the high end. I looked at reamp boxes for a while and was even tempted just to build one (well, by "me" i mean the other guitarist in our band, he's way better at soldering than i am ) but our other guitarist suggested using a buffered guitar pedal between the AI and amp and i was pleasantly surprised at how much of a difference it made. I still don't think it sounded right as such but it was much better than it had been and was more than good enough to get, and capture, the tone we wanted. Impedance is one of those things that i think i get until i try to explain it to someone and then just confuse myself and whoever it is i'm speaking to, so i'm by no means any kind of authority on the subject, but it seemed to me that the mismatch in impedance between the amp and AI in my situation was causing the dulled tone because the volume going in to it was as close as i could get it to just bunging a guitar into the amp.

 

[ecc83]

"but our other guitarist suggested using a buffered guitar pedal between the AI and amp and i was pleasantly surprised at how much of a difference it made."

I cannot see any reason for that Just'

The output Z of the AI should be low enough not to have any effect upon the HF response even with a stupidily long cable. A buffer should have a very low OPZ (part of the definition of a "buffer" after all!) but in reality be no better than the AI.

It is likely that a simple, resistive attenuator of about 20dB ( 10k in series with 1k) at the guitar amp end would have achieved equally good results.

Dave.

 

[Lt. Bob]

"
It is likely that a simple, resistive attenuator of about 20dB ( 10k in series with 1k) at the guitar amp end would have achieved equally good results.

Dave.

it is likely that every guitarist should have lots of pedals around while very few have a simply resistive attenuator handy.

 

[ecc83]

it is likely that every guitarist should have lots of pedals around while very few have a simply resistive attenuator handy.

Fair doos Bob but that does not explain the poor result from the (should be) low Z AI.

(and y'all orta know about simple attenuators if you do anything with "audio"! Only Ohm's Law tha' knows and THAT is just "MPG".)

Dave.

 

[Greg_L]

Howzabout you guys just plug a guitar into an amp, turn it up loud, and press record? I get that micromanaging and chasing the best tone ever can be fun, but really, anyone that listens to your crap isn't going to care if your amp's presence knob was on 4 instead of 3.

 

[JG96]

Very blunt of you Greg. What has gotten into you lately. Sometimes I feel that all the technology and time to mix gets us home recordists a bit obsessive. Sometimes I will find myself obsessing over tiny eq cuts and gain reduction levels and what not. Its important to realize at that point that nobody (but me) is going to care.
Anyway I use one of these to reamp: Audio-Technica CP8201 Transformer at zZounds
It may not be the best option but I reamp snare and vocals more often than guitars anyway.